


Kissing Lessons... and More

by Flowyen



Series: The Plague Doctor [1]
Category: The Arcana (Visual Novel)
Genre: Angst and Fluff and Smut, Explicit Consent, F/M, POV First Person, There is Plot i promise, catching feelings, exactly what it sounds like, light sub Julian, mentions of past relationships - Freeform, set somewhere mid-canon, slight apprentice backstory spoilers, slight spoilers for early in Julian's route, some good awkwardness, starts out slow and soft and eventually gets to the smut, you just gotta look for it
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-07-16
Updated: 2020-08-24
Packaged: 2021-03-04 17:42:19
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 7
Words: 36,224
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25300315
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Flowyen/pseuds/Flowyen
Summary: I sigh, getting ready for the words I’d been rehearsing for well over a week in my bathroom mirror. “I’d like you to teach me how to do all those things, Julian,” I begin, earning a startled look as he slowly picks up my meaning. “I don’t want my inexperience to be the reason I don’t pursue a relationship, but at the same time, I don’t want to be laughed at for doing anything wrong.”Julian’s features soften a little, the look of surprise slowly fading from his angular face and replaced with a sort of compassionate concern.“You really think I’d be the best person to do this with?” he says after a while with a small voice.
Relationships: Apprentice/Julian Devorak, Julian Devorak/Reader, Julian Devorak/You
Series: The Plague Doctor [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1890391
Comments: 141
Kudos: 484





	1. The Proposition

“I’m sorry, you’ve never what?”

Julian only just manages to keep his drink down that night at the Rowdy Raven, staring at me with slightly unfocused eyes and while I calmly and rationally try to explain my line of thinking. 

“I’ve never been kissed,” I repeat, slowly. “I’ve never even dated.”

Julian’s eyes give me a disbelieving once over, as if he were trying to piece me together. “Really? I mean, not that there’s anything wrong with that, but you are… forgive me, but you are rather attractive, and I guess I just thought, well, that doesn’t really matter.” He cut himself off with a wave of his gloved hand. “I’m sorry, I’m, uh, rambling. I appreciate your confidence in me, MC, but… why bring it up?”

I sigh, getting ready for the words I’d been rehearsing for well over a week in my bathroom mirror. “I’d like you to teach me how to do all those things, Julian,” I begin, earning a startled look as Julian slowly picks up my meaning. “It's just, I don’t know, I’m getting older, and I want to be in a relationship at some point. I feel like I have all the emotional stuff figured out, but as far as the physical…” I glance down, beginning to feel slightly embarrassed. “I don’t want my inexperience to be the reason I don’t pursue a relationship, but at the same time, I don’t want to be laughed at for doing anything wrong.”

Julian’s features soften a little, the look of surprise slowly fading from his angular face and replaced with a sort of compassionate concern.  
“No one worth loving would laugh at you in bed.”

I smile, but that isn’t the point. Not really, not entirely. “I just… I feel like I’m missing out on things, I feel like I have a lot to offer. And I know it’s a strange request and until now we’ve just been friends, but… I trust you not to hurt me, not to laugh at me. You’re so good at explaining things, and I'm sure you know what you’re doing so it isn’t like you’re going to give me bad advice, and-” 

Much like Julian, I realize I’m rambling. I dare to look up at him, and notice that he’s turned a little pink. 

“You really think I’d be the best person to do this with?” he says after a while with a small voice. “I’m not trying to turn you away, but, wouldn’t Asra… I mean you know him better than you know me, and I… I would have thought that he’d be your first choice.”

“I thought about Asra,” I begin, not having expected the question but with no reluctance to answer it. “But I didn’t think he’d take it the way I mean. I almost know him too well, you know? And I live with him so I feel like that wouldn’t end well, especially if…”

Julian tensed, knowing where I was headed. “If?”

“If one of us catches feelings,” I say softly, looking down. “Because that isn’t what this is. I’m not asking anyone to love me in this process, I just want to know how to do the physical things. I just want to learn, no strings attached.”

I can feel Julian’s eyes on me, sense the hesitation within him, though what the cause of the hesitation is I cannot say. He opens his mouth as if to say something, reconsiders, takes a measured sip from his salty bitter. 

“Where would we do it?”

“Asra’s gone most of the time, usually with advance warning. You could come to my apartment over the shop.”

Julian almost winces at that. “That all feels a bit clandestine, doesn’t it? What with my, uh, history with Asra and all.”

“I don’t know the full extent of that relationship,” I admit, shifting in my seat. “But we could change locations as needed. I wasn’t planning on telling Asra, if you were wondering. I’m not sure how he’d react.”

As much as Julian tries to think of a logical reason to say no, or to suggest we go somewhere else, I can tell that he draws a blank, the same blank that I had upon thinking of other options. He lets loose a heavy sigh, as if knowingly making a decision he isn’t sure he won’t regret. 

“If I say yes, I want the option of drawing back whenever. If something happens and either of us are uncomfortable, I want your promise that we can stop. It wouldn’t be as a result of your inexperience,” he adds quickly after seeing my expression. “But I… the nature of this is so charged, I want there to be the option to stop, for both of us.”

I nod after thinking it over for a moment. “Like a safeword?”

Julian smiles, a knowing kind that tells me the way in which I’d used the term wasn’t necessarily correct. 

“Something like that,” he agrees. 

“Sure. Whatever works,” I say, clutching my own drink between my fingers tense with anticipation. I take a long draw of the liquid, feeling it bubbling up on my insides. “So, when do we begin?”


	2. Kissing

We start two days from then. Malak squawks overhead as I return home from my trip to the market, a little note in near-illegible ink tied to his foot. 

_Lesson 1 - 1:00, your place?_

The square's clock tower had just chimed half past noon as I left the market, meaning that I have only fifteen minutes to send a reply and get the apartment ready. I offer my wrist to Malak, on which he perches himself gently. Julian must have told him not to dig his claws into me. 

I manage to get the door open with all the things I carry, at one point almost tossing Malak in with the groceries. I look for a quill of some kind as well as some scrap paper - which I end up ripping from the corner of an old spell book I keep forgetting to skim over. I see something about thermal manipulation in the few seconds that I have the pages open, though I’m too busy writing what I hope is a concise yet appealing _yes!_ to Julian’s proposed place and time and strapping it to Malak’s patiently held out foot to take much notice.

As soon as Malak has burst through the window in a flurry of feathers, I seal the thing up and get to work tidying. I set the shop sign to read “closed,” gather up the baskets of market goodies, and bolt up to my apartment, knowing full well that Asra doesn’t get back for another week. I leave the baskets in the kitchen, throw a few things that are laying out haphazardly into closets, cupboards, and any other storage place that keeps things out of sight. My place isn’t too out of sorts, at least, though it is a bit of a disorganized mess - the kind that someone might see and call “artsy.” At least I hope it appears that way. Upon looking in a mirror, I find myself to look like a somewhat _less_ artistic mess, with flushed cheeks and lips from my walk back home in the summer sun, my hair a wild result of wind and sweat tugging at the braid I had put it in before leaving the house. 

I run to my room, throwing on a fresh outfit and letting my hair down, meaning to comb it out. It’s not that I’m trying to make any particular sort of impression with this - I had specifically told Julian that this was a learning opportunity. No feelings would be involved, and that means not actively trying to impress him with how I look. Though, that doesn’t mean I’m going to let myself kiss him looking like this. 

Feeling satisfied in my appearance treading that fine between try-hard and slob which can almost be called effortless, I settle myself down on my living room loveseat, doing a once over as the apartment gets hit by a stream of rather splendid sunlight.

And then, three harried knocks on my shop’s back door jump me awake and have me catapulting over the back of the seat. The excitement is palpable. I can taste the adrenaline. 

I can sense my guest is Julian before I even open the door, feeling his aura halfway down the steps. Emotions heighten auras, though his is such a jumbled mess I can’t tell what he’s feeling at the moment, and I’m willing to guess that neither is he.

“Julian!” I smile, swinging the door open and trying to remain casual about it all. “Hi, come in.”

Julian nods, smiles. Thanks me. His normal overcoat has been swapped out for a billowing shirt in the day’s heat, unbuttoned to show his collarbone. Like my flushed cheeks, his pale skin seems to have been tinged by the sunlight from his walk over. I hope he didn’t get a burn, for my sake. 

He steps inside, looking around the shop intently. “It's been awhile,” he notes, keen gaze finding trinkets and baubles to fix on, to stall with. “Do all those things really work?”

He gestures to one of Asra’s extensive crystal displays, and I can’t help but shrug. “About as much as leeches, I think.”

Julian gives me an affronted glance before laughing to himself. “I’ll stay clear of them then.”

I laugh, sensing an awkward silence which I try to stave off as we both stare at each other, wanting for someone else to make the first move. Julian looks inherently nervous - more so than usual, and being the host, I decide to take the leap. 

“Would you like to go upstairs? There’s less magicky stuff to worry about. I can make tea or something if you want.”

“Ah, no. I mean -” Julian catches his breath, already blushing slightly. “I mean, yes, let’s go up, but no thank you to the tea, I… I think that what we’ll be doing will get in the way of that.”

Gods, he really is bright pink. I can’t help but let loose my own nervous laugh. “Is that so?”

Behind me, Julian says nothing more as we make it up the stairs, and when I finally lead him into my cozy apartment, he keeps his silence, standing in the doorway looking surprised. Like it had in my shop, Julian’s eye roams around, catching on furniture or little mementos hanging on the walls. 

“You’ve… redecorated it, then?” He says in a way which is more of a statement. “You and Asra?”

I shrug, closing the door behind him and setting the deadbolt, just in case. “I inherited the shop from my aunt back in the day, apparently. Most of the furniture was hers, and a good bit of it was bespelled in some confusing way or another. When I woke up after my... _accident_ three years ago, Asra had me rekindle my magic by trying to work them out. I got tired of that and decided that selling all the gaudy old things in order to redesign the place was a better use of my limited mental capacities.” 

I laugh it off, but I can tell Julian’s concerned. Maybe bringing him to the apartment was a bad idea. 

“It looks… nice,” he sighs after a moment, seemingly genuine. “Cozy. A lot like you, actually.”

“It would have been too much before, if I’d just decided to leave things the way they were,” I think aloud. “This whole other life I didn’t remember, the nicks in the couch’s wooden arm haunting my blank memory like a ghost.” I blink once, realizing how heavy the tone has gotten and that I should have just said ‘thank you’ and moved on. “ _Anyway_ , that’s not why you’re here, is it? Take a seat, tell me what you’ve thought up. Your message intrigued me - ‘lesson one.’ Have you thought out a whole curriculum for me?”

I say it teasingly, and the subject change does not go unnoticed by him, but thankfully, Julian smiles and spreads his lanky self into an armchair with a turquoise and white triangle patterned pillow.

“Well, you wanted to learn and I’m a man who likes structure. And I don’t want you to think you’re getting the short end of our little arrangement as the result of my own mismanagement.”

I laugh, reclaiming my place in the loveseat, crossing my legs carefully beneath me. “If anyone’s getting the bum end of the deal here, it's you, Julian. If you want something in return for all of this, don’t hesitate to ask.”

He flushes again, his bravado crumbling. When he speaks next, it's with a slight stammer. “What, getting to spend time with the loveliest apprentice in all of Vesuvia isn’t reward enough for me?”

“Am I getting a pop quiz on flirting, too?”

Julian makes a little squawk not unlike Malak, and I bark out another laugh. This will be far less awkward than I was expecting. “I’m sorry, Julian, I’m just teasing,” I add upon seeing his uncertain expression.

“You wound me, you know,” he sighs dramatically, a hand splaying across his chest. I wonder if my own hand will be doing that any time soon. 

“So,” I say, getting to the present matter. “What _is_ lesson one?”

“Well, considering the fact that it's midday and we’ve never done this before, I thought that starting with something simple would be best, test the waters, if you will.”

“We aren’t actually starting with flirting, are we?”

“Not unless you want to.”

I scrunch up my nose. “Hard pass.” 

Julian chuckles, relaxing a bit. “Like you said, physicality. Though, I suppose there’s a manner of that in flirting as well.” He waves his hand, brushing aside the point and refocusing himself. “No, I thought that a simple round of kissing would be the easiest place to start. You’ll pick up the flirting along the way.”

I nod, smoothing out my hair and resituating myself on the loveseat. As sure as I felt a minute ago, I’m suddenly a bit nervous. After all, I’m going to be terrible at it…

Julian clears his throat. “Perhaps some, uh, liquid courage might bolster our resolve? Just enough to take an edge off, mind you. I have no intention of doing this drunk.”

What a great idea.

I jump off the loveseat again, shaky adrenaline energy kicking in as I rummage through the kitchen behind me. I find an open bottle of red wine in the icebox, and after a brief inspection, deem it suitable.

“It’s not Golden Goose by any means,” I apologize when I hand Julian a glass, watching his fingers twine elegantly around the stem.

Julian shrugs good naturedly and pours us both a fair amount of the liquid, corking the bottle and setting it out of reach when he’s through. His shirt becomes a little less done up in the process, and I can’t help but wonder if his exposed chest is merely the result of the Vesuvian heatwave or if, like me, he’d carefully dressed himself to appear more casual than he felt.

“Shall we toast?” He smirks, stopping himself from taking a sip.

I roll my eyes and let the wine fall into my mouth. “We haven’t anything to celebrate, _yet_ ,” I add, already feeling the tingling of alcohol on its way down, settling in my chest like a cat’s purr. 

“Here’s to hoping on that front, at least.” 

Julian takes a generous sip of the wine, and after a few more minutes of idle, nervous chatter, our glasses are empty and there’s nothing left to do but the inevitable. 

“Mind if I join you on the... couch,” Julian asks after a moment of pointedly staring at it. Obviously he didn’t want to outright call it a loveseat.

Wordlessly, I scoot over, patting the blue cushion next to me. He uncrosses one long leg off the other before getting up and takes less than a full stride to plop down next to me. I’m aware of how slow his movements are, how intentional. 

“So,” he laughs, not quite meeting my gaze just yet. “Before we start, are you… I mean, you wouldn’t _know_ yet necessarily, but do you think you’d prefer to be more, uh, dominant or submissive in this?”

I blink, more confused than anything. “Pardon?”

Julian tinges pink for a moment before he looks up to the sky. “You know what? Never mind, that’s a conversation for later. Just… I’ll be more in control for the moment, but if you’re uncomfortable at any point you can let me know and I’ll stop or we’ll switch or-“

I squeeze his hands assuredly in mine, trying to placate him but frowning a bit at the leather gloves. As I begin to pull them off, his words gradually die out. 

We both know what I’ll see as the glove slips off: the murder’s mark. 

Julian tenses, makes to pull away.

“I trust you,” I tell him, softly. 

He looks like there are a hundred things he wants to say, to protest. After a long, thought out silence, he stops, sighs, and pulls one of my hands to his lips.

“At least you know,” he says resolutely before kissing my knuckles softly, the breath hitting me before the heat of his skin. 

I shiver, involuntarily, and Julian pauses for a moment to check that it isn’t out of fear or disgust before continuing. His nose nuzzles my inner wrist, a careful touch to delicate flesh. 

“The thing with kissing,” he begins, breaking his sentence to brush his lips against different parts of my bare arm. “Is that there’s more than just the open mouthed, tongue mashing nonsense everyone finds so appealing.”

He rests at my collarbone, speaking against my skin. I have the split second notion that he’ll try and bite me there, and judging by his hesitation, he considers it.

He moves on. 

“But I find that these soft ones are sometimes more tender, more stimulating.” He reaches my neck, breathing just below my ear. “You try.”

I only pause for a moment, in which he pulls away, patiently waiting. Our knees are touching, joining us where our hands and mouths do not. 

I shut my eyes, take a deep breath in and out through my nose, and begin.

I start with his left hand, the one with the mark. He offers no resistance as I lace his fingers in mine, feeling the calluses on his palm, the strength in his joints. I bend forward, reaching down to meet him, reclined as he is against the tall arm of the loveseat. 

My lips meet the tops of his knuckles, feather light. I barely make contact, but with all the focus I place on my mouth, on getting it right, even that’s enough to send a slight through me. I stop myself from looking up at Julian, searching for approval. I try again, moving to his inner wrist. More of my lips make contact, and I don’t expect them to feel so squished against another surface. I can feel every twitch in my own skin, each micromotion. 

I move on.

His sleeves get in the way of my kissing up his arm in the same fashion as he’d done to me, but his shoulder is free from the collar of his shirt, and so I pick my next target. Lingering there longer still, a hint of the wet part of my lips becomes exposed to Julian’s flesh, my mouth ever so slightly open.

I feel his chest rise and fall beside me, and keeping my eye on his collarbone, my next spot, I gingerly press my hand over what little fabric covers his chest, careful to aim high enough to avoid his nipple, territory that I am far from ready to explore at present.

“How am I doing?” I ask, voice sounding small and timid, and not at all sensual like I’d hoped it would.

His breath ruffles the top of my head, though whether he’s laughing I cannot say. 

“You’re only three in, love. Don’t worry about being perfect yet, just explore.”

My other hand rests on his right shoulder, and I try to ignore the little flip my stomach did when he called me ‘love.’ 

As intended, I go to his collarbone, actively spreading my lips around his delicate structure. Not wide enough to be outright vulgar, but when I pull away, I make a wet little suction sound, much to my embarrassment.

Julian hums a little, and when I finally dare to glance up, his eye is shut and his lips are drawn into the faintest smile. 

I must not be doing so badly, then.

I place another kiss over his collarbone, a softer one, and then I slowly brush the tip of my nose against the divet in his neck, running it in a straight line to his chin while angling myself so that my lips find his flesh of their own accord. Julian tilts his head back somewhat eagerly, exposing his pale throat to me entirely. 

As I tease him some more, working my way up to his jaw with a mixture of barely there and more present touches, I realize that his hands are firmly gripping the edges of the couch, white knuckled, even. 

I don't think I'm hurting him, and by the way he responded to my touch I don’t think I’m completely awful either, which leaves...

“Are you…” I start, pulling away from his skin a bit. “You can touch me, if you want to.”

Julian’s eye cracks open. He looks at me with confusion for a second before shifting to stare at his tightly clenched hands.

“Oh,” he mutters, looking away. “Sorry, I just… I wasn’t sure.”

Slowly, his hands release from their place on the couch, and he settles them gingerly on my hips. I don’t realize until that second that I’ve sort of straddled him, somehow finding my way into his lap.

I drag my eyes up quickly before they can linger too low too long.

Though I’m on top of him, sort of, we’re still very much on even footing. Even reclined slightly, Julian sits mostly upright and is still taller than I am. I shift a bit as he looks down, wondering if I return to what I was doing or if I’ve ruined the mood. 

“Shall I get back to it or…?”

“Your choice,” Julian sighs, relaxing a bit. “You could keep practicing or we could go to the more, uh, main event of today’s topic. I’m here to do whatever you want me to.”

 _Don’t leave this up to me_ , I think frantically, trying not to panic. What _do_ I want to do?

As if sensing my turmoil, Julian smiles. One hand comes up to brush my hair from where it had fallen into my eyes, and I make a mental note to wear it tied back more securely next time. “Shall we move on?” he suggests, voice deep and calm and patient. My hands feel it echoing in his chest, and I have the strangest sensation that I could get very used to hearing that voice in the forthcoming weeks. 

I nod, looking down. 

Julian doesn’t move. “Uh, could you… could you agree to that more verbally? It would make me feel better about this.”

“Yes, I can. And - I mean, yes, let's move on.”

“Thank you.”

Both of Julian’s hands come up to my face, one resting on the side and touching my hair and the other gently tilting my chin up to face him and slightly to the side for alignment. “I’ll start simple. Closed lips, just focus on the touch. You don’t have to do anything yet, just try and remember where I make contact with you so that you can repeat it later.”

He’s looking down the bridge of his nose at me with a hooded lid, seeking my approval. He slowly starts to move in closer before he pauses. I can feel his words against my skin.

“Oh,” he adds quickly. “You’ll want to close your eyes. It’s better that way, for both of us.”

I take one last look at him. The sunlight is streaming in from the window behind, reflecting off the glass of the building across the street. It casts a halo around the border of his auburn curls, and for a moment, I’m content to do no more than stare at him. 

Regardless, I close my eyes, wait. Try and relax, try not to purse my lips. 

I’m expecting it to be awkward, still. For him to clamp his mouth over mine and just hold it there until I figure out how it's supposed to feel. After all, how could it possibly be more dynamic than that if my sole mission here is to not do anything in response?

I can sense him drawing nearer, slowly, cautiously. I have the sneaking suspicion that he’s watching me, but I forget about it entirely a moment later when I feel the first brush of his lips on mine, the first inkling of sensation. 

And oh, I’m not expecting _that_.

I feel him first at the center of my lips, swell against swell as warmth presses into me. He stacks us so that my top lip is the highest, leaving my bottom lip to be caressed between the both of his. The tip of his nose, cold against my flushed skin, skims me ever so slightly and gives a kiss of its own. The pressure remains in the rosebud of our mouths, but as me moves closer, his hands guiding my head on where to hold my position, I feel the sensation widen, nearly reaching the corners. I can feel every movement in my own lips, but also in his, and for a moment it's almost difficult to discern what belongs to whom. It builds until I feel my own skin folding back on itself, soft and tender and loose, and then he pulls away, leaving me tingly and cold and very much wanting more.

“Not bad at all,” Julian laughs softly, something sad about it. “Especially for a first kiss.”

It _was_ my first kiss. A sunlit thing, carefree, smooth.

 _Addicting_.

“Don’t forget to breathe,” he warns me as I let out the breath I didn’t realize I’d been holding. My eyes are still closed, the feeling of him still on my smiling lips. “Do you want to try?”

I flutter my eyes open, letting them adjust to the light. “Do I line it up the same way you did with my lip on top or do I try and take your place?”

Julian thinks about it for a minute. “Try and take mine. It’s easier to line up on the bottom lip than the top, and that way you won’t accidentally overcompensate and end up in my nose.”

I laugh, mostly just to get rid of my nerves. His hands have slipped away from my face, but I try to mirror what he did. I tilt my head to my right, and he does the opposite on his own. I brush the back of my fingers against the corner of his lip, trailing my hand down until I reach a spot on his jaw that seems to be a good anchor and tilt him down to reach me. I sit up a little higher, and use my other hand to act as a guide to where his lips are. I close my eyes halfway to him, and by using the position of my thumb, manage to press my lips against the center-ish of his. There’s a lot less grace to my movements, less tact. I start off barely even touching him and shift to get a bit closer, which results in the kiss becoming a lot firmer a lot faster. 

To my surprise but also relief, Julian doesn’t pull away from the added pressure. His lips remain soft, pliant, which in turn let mine take the hint and do the same, but the very hands that had been careful to keep their distance at first fly with a speed up to my jaw, my head. He doesn’t push me against him, but rather holds me still and moves himself. Our lips switch positions after a moment, and I find myself back on top. I lose myself in the presses he makes, the alternations between stiff and soft, forward and back. One kiss turns into two, three, all closed, but each of varying angles. 

I remember to breathe at last, and my mouth parts into a gasp. Julian’s mouth opens as well, but he stops himself short of contact, waiting. 

“You alright?”

I press my forehead against his, reliving each of the kisses in glorious, physical memory. “Very much so, yes,” I manage, nearly lost in bliss. There are other things about my body that I notice, other forms of what I assume to be arousal just barely budding at the back of my consciousness. For both our sakes, I try my best to ignore them and focus on the tasks at hand. 

“Did you,” he starts, breathy. “Did you want to try opening up this time or just keep with the closed lips for now?”

“I want to know it all,” I reply before I even realize what I’ve said. “I mean, I’m going to be absolutely _terrible_ at it, I can already tell, so as long as you know that-”

“Somehow, I really don’t think that you will be.”

Julian’s comment startles my eyes open, and what I see is a blushing mess. I don’t remember carding my hands through his hair, but somehow it manages to stand up on its own in certain places as if the wind had gotten to it before I had. From the tip of his nose to the tops of his ears is bright pink, but the way his brows are set makes me think that there’s a small chance he’s actually _enjoying_ this. 

“Well,” he clears his throat, sitting up a bit and pushing his hair down into a somewhat more tidy state. “Again, I can start it, if you want. We’ll do what we have been, but when you’re ready for more just open your mouth a bit and I’ll… well, you know. Just, try and follow my lead as best as you can and make sure to breathe through your nose.”

I nod, situating myself on his hips. “Whenever you’re ready, Doctor Devorak,” I laugh, raising my eyebrows in a mockingly suggestive way. I feel Julian’s half-embarrassed laugh beneath me, and he scrunches up his eye.

“Just come here,” he prompts, beckoning me in. 

It's nice to know what to expect at first, to feel less shaky about it and just a tad more in control of my own body. I keep from my waist down stationary but let my hands roam and explore. Julian’s kisses are stronger now, less fragile, less afraid that I’ll shatter, no doubt. His hands reach for the back of my neck, but he doesn’t lock me down, and I know that should I wish to pull back at all, his fingers wouldn’t form a barrier glueing me to him. We move a bit faster too, and I make sure that I can match his pace before we move onto the next step. My hands are clutching the shirt at his collar, wanting something sturdy to grab in case I tense up for any reason. 

Trying not to hesitate or come in on the wrong beat, I part my swollen lips a tad, waiting for Julian to do whatever it is that he means to.  
He stills a bit, repositioning his hands. I feel his tongue pressing through my mouth, past my teeth, searching, waiting. 

I’m so glad my eyes aren’t open. 

When my tongue reaches forward, brushing his after what seems like an eternity of searching, I find that my first thought is of how much his tastes like wine and feels like a smooth, supple strawberry. It invades my mouth further, pressing my own tongue to the roof of my mouth before snaking over the tip and pushing it back down. I manage to move against it under and sideways, prompting the both of us to do a little spin. 

My hands move of their own accord to his neck, where I can feel his muscles tensing with each thrust of himself into me. Julian takes a sharp breath through his nose as my fingers splay across his sensitive flesh, and I file the reaction into the back of my mind somewhere that Julian’s neck seems especially responsive. 

I draw my tongue back, and the kisses become the kind which start open and then end closed, imprecise, a little sloppy. When we’ve migrated back to keeping our lips pressed for a bit, I feel Julian part tremulously against my mouth.

 _An invite_.

I take it, focusing back in on my movements. His lips are slick and smooth when I pass by them, and it contrasts with his waiting tongue’s budded sharpness. I push one way, he provides the opposite force. I’m struck with how incredibly reactive he seems, reading each and every half-formed intent that I send him and taking to it in strides. Not that I have any basis for comparison, but he’s a great kisser. A fantastic kisser, actually. His tongue retreats further and further back, teasing me, daring me to follow as it flicks at me, making sure I’m coming.  
I hit his teeth with mine by accident, the grating making me jump out of my dreamy haze. I consider pulling away and apologizing, but Julian’s tongue just smooths over mine as it makes its way to the offending teeth. 

_Stay_ , he seems to say. _Explore, deeper_

And so I resume. I don’t relinquish control for a while longer, determined to find all the different ways of wrapping two tongues against each other before I’m done for good. At one point I press a little too vigorously back and trigger Julian’s gag reflex, the motion rippling under my fingers still resting on his neck before it reaches my tongue.

Contrary to what I thought would happen, Julian actually _moans_ once his throat has quieted and he’s caught his breath. He does however, keep the both of us closer to the front of his mouth from then on, stroking my hair reassuringly all the while. 

When I finally sense him pulling away, slowly ending the heated passion between us, I slip out of his mouth and retreat into my own, but not before my teeth catch on his lip. 

If I thought the moan he made after the gag was something, I am not at all prepared for the unseemly sound that comes out of him when my bite takes hold. His hands actually fist my hair, and his whole body keens beneath me. 

“ _That_ ,” he pants after pulling himself from my touch. “Is a topic for a different day.”

Eye still closed, his head falls back, leaning in an arch over the loveseat’s arm and baring more of that sinewy neck. I take the hint to leave the kissing alone, for now, but I can’t help but wonder what sorts of sounds Julian would make if I were to be a bit rough with him there as well…

The sunlight is now a darker gold, signalling that more time has passed than I had expected for it to. Julian’s hands find and squeeze mine, though his head still lurches away, eye closed. His shirt is in a messy state of affairs, wrinkled and falling from his waistband. I have the strong desire to fix it for him, but I don’t want to send the wrong impression by letting my hands go too close to his belt, no yet, anyway. 

“Was that... at all good for you?” I ask sheepishly after a few more moments of silence pass.

“ _Gods yes_ ,” he says enthusiastically. “I thought I was going to have to give you notes of some kind or stop halfway through, but I’m drawing an utter blank. You’re certain you’ve never done that before?”

I shake my head before realizing that he can’t see it. “No, not that I’m aware of.”

Julian lifts his head just enough to give me a good natured yet disbelieving look, and then flops it back down, rubbing his temples with his fingertips. “Well at least you’re making my job a hell of a lot easier than I was expecting. Not that I expected you to be bad or anything, that’s not the case at all, I just… you picked everything up remarkably quickly, all things considered.”

I sit up a bit straighter, feeling like a bird preening its feathers on the praise. 

“It helps to have a good partner though, I’m sure.”

Julian flushes all over again.


	3. Roaming Hands

I don’t stop thinking about Julian’s lips on my own for the rest of the week. Well, not entirely. When I’m not remembering the taste of him, the feel of it all, I’m busy imagining what might come next, what new sensations there are to explore. I don’t think we’ll jump straight to sex, not yet. I even don’t think I’d want to. It seems like something to build up, to savor. If we just go ahead and jump into it, I’m afraid that the little things won’t seem so exciting anymore.

“Are you feeling alright?”

I register Asra’s worried face to my left just as the last customers leave the shop, closing us up for the afternoon.

“What?”

“You seem… distracted. Have you been working too hard? You can always take a break, you know.”

Ah, yes. That’s the problem. Not my daydreaming about Julian, to be sure. 

It’s one of those rare instances in which I’m so, _so_ happy that Asra cannot read my thoughts as plainly as I hear them. _Did Julian kiss him like that as well when they were together?_

“I’m alright,” I reply, realizing he’s still looking for an answer. “And I know I can take a break, honest.”

“Are you worried about something?”

“No.”

Asra pouts. Though he may not be able to read my mind, the fact that he knows me so well nearly negates it. One wrong look could give me away. 

He sighs after a long, hard moment of staring at my face. He returned earlier than I was expecting. I’d meant to give Julian the memo as soon as I found Asra on the front step, but we’d had a busy week, and though he was nearly always on my mind, slipping him the notice seems to have gotten lost in the tumble of things. Although, he hasn’t made an attempt to contact or see me either, something which has begun to become worrisome. _Was I bad last time? Is he having second thoughts?_

“You know what,” I say, stepping around the herb counter where I’ve been positioned, “I think I just need to blow off some steam. You don’t mind if I go out tonight, do you? I might not be back until late.”

Asra raises a white eyebrow, equally surprised and suspicious. “You want to go out? Alone?”

_Not if I get lucky_.

“It’s still light out. I have some spells I want to look at and sometimes they only make sense when I’m a little tipsy.”

To sell my story, I grab the nearest book of spells, one with dog-eared pages and the distinct look of something handed down. Asra doesn’t look particularly convinced, but he seems to let it go quickly enough. 

“You sound like someone I used to know,” he mutters, walking up the stairs. “Just be careful. You know how to contact me should you need my help."

“Yes, I’ll duck my head into the nearest puddle and scry for you,” I joke, shoving the book into a bag and waving him off. Anticipating a cooler night, I grab a cloak off our rack, mess with my hair in the reflection of a window for a moment, and step out into the night.

The Rowdy Raven is packed to the brim. Tables are overcrowded, filled with dancing, jovial patrons on their sixth or so rounds of various beers and liquors. Upon my first, albeit harried, inspection of the room, I do not see my familiar redhead anywhere. I do, however, spot an empty table in the corner and fight my way through the rambunctious patrons in order to claim it. 

I manage to thump down onto the carved bench with a satisfying _thwunk_ before anyone else tries to claim it, and within minutes a bartender has gotten me something to sip on while I wait. 

_What am I doing?_

I drink my honey-colored mead once it arrives, and open the spellbook sitting innocently in my bag. Flipping through the pages, I notice some vaguely familiar spells, ones for changing the temperature of the spellcaster’s body, for instance, and I recall looking through the book for scrap paper the last time Julian came to visit. The spell seems simple enough, and one throwaway line scribbled by the previous owner in the margins reads “success!” I can only wonder as to what sort of use a spell like this could possibly have. 

A loud noise at the bar grabs my attention, and I snap my head up. All across the tavern, the more alert patrons seem to do the same, looking for the commotion. Some fight or another, perhaps, but I soon lose interest, for my eyes catch on something else entirely. 

“Julian?” I call to a few tables over, where he’s staring at me with an almost absurd amount of surprise. 

He blinks a few times, as if not fully sure that I’m there before sheepishly standing up and bringing his few belongings over to the table along with a mug of something at my welcoming gesture to do so. 

“I didn’t know that you, uh, came here,” he admits, sitting on the opposite end of the curved bench. 

I can feel my pulse pick up when my sight catches on his half-open shirt, on the collarbone I kissed last time I saw him… on those lips…

“I thought I’d try something new,” I admit, smiling fondly. “I seem to be doing a lot of that, nowadays.”

His brow raises, and a moment later he brings his bitter-smelling drink to those lips. “Any other kissing partners I should know about who do their job better than I?”

Julian’s remark is muffled into his cup, but somehow I catch the slightest edge to his voice - is it jealousy? No, can’t be. Not when we agreed not to get attached. It must just be the loudness of the room. 

“I might be naive and inexperienced,” I begin, palming my own mug between my hands. “But I don’t think I’ll find anyone who can top what you did for a long while.”

he tiniest look of surprise dawns on his features. I find it endearing.

“Besides, Asra’s back early so it’s not like I’ve really had the opportunity to go looking anyway.”

Julian nods, as if he knew. Perhaps he was staying away so as not to throw suspicion onto either of us, something I can greatly appreciate. 

“Does he know where you are?”

I shrug. “I’ve told him I wanted to spend the evening out. He doesn’t know why or where.”

“I’m not disturbing you, am I?” Julian asks hastily, the book before us catching his wide eye.

I slam it shut, quickly, banishing all thoughts of running my magically cooled or heated hands over his body as I shove it aside. 

“No, not at all,” I protest, trying to seem both sincere and not too terribly desperate. “I was… well, I was hoping I might possibly run into you.”

“Is something wrong?”

_Why does he sound like he’s expecting it to be?_

I shift a little in my seat, feeling a blush starting at the swell in my cheeks. “I hadn’t heard from you since the last time we got together. I just wanted to make sure everything is alright.”

I’m fixating on a spot on the table in front of me, trying my best not to seem clingy or over involved in any way. Casual, friendly. _Gods I wish there was something else to do with my hands._

“I…” he splutters, looking taken aback once I finally manage to glance up at him. “I… well, that’s awfully considerate of you, isn’t it?” He shoves his thick hair back away from his face, and the motion makes his shirt stretch across his muscled frame. I can’t help but look. “I thought you might want some space to cool down, especially with Asra being back in town, and I was afraid of coming across as too pushy about all of this, seeing as I set the time and place for our last little...uh, lesson.”

“I didn’t think you were being pushy, Julian, though I appreciate the concern.”  
He relaxes a bit, gaze casting downwards. “The last thing I want to do is hurt you.”

My throat seizes up a little. It’s no wonder he never seems to be at a loss for a romantic partner, not when he can make me feel like _this_ so easily. 

“Thank you,” I repeat, at a loss for anything else to say. “I’m… I’m glad I chose to do this with you.”

He blushes even more deeply, if that’s possible. I do not fail to catch the wry, flickering smile on his lips, a moment of genuine emotion before he plasters on the usual smirk I know him best for. 

“Happy to satisfy. And speaking of which…” He glances around the room, conspiratorially. “I was wondering where exactly you’d like to take the second lesson. How far, I mean.” He shifts a bit in his seat. “‘Second base,’ after all, can mean a whole host of things.”

I blink, slightly confused. “Second base?”

His brow furrows, but then he seems to remember my inexperience. “Ah, yes. Well. First base is what we did last time, kissing. Second is touching, though whether clothes stay on or off seems to be a bit… mum. Third is… everything else.”

So, are there only to be three lessons? Why does that feel… disappointing?

“I mean, there are other things too,” he quickly adds, perhaps sensing my sudden hesitation. “But I didn’t want to push my own luck. This is, after all, on your own time. We can go on for as long as you want, but at some point, even my rather… extensive knowledge on the subject might run out.”

“Well, hopefully not too soon,” I mutter.

I don’t even bother to see if he heard that or not, opting to take a sip of my drink instead. There’s enough on my plate as it is with running the shop and trying to remember all the things I seem to have forgotten about myself. I’ll enjoy the distraction. Immensely. 

“You don’t happen to be free tonight, do you?” I ask, emboldened by the drink. “It wouldn’t have to be as long as last time, if that’s an issue. And we can… do the more, um, proprietary version of second base, if you want. Clothes on.”

Julian, who seems to be constantly moving at least some part of himself nervously at all times, sits very still. “Really?” he squawks, the sound small and soft. His eye slides to my half-empty glass. “How many of those have you had, honestly?”

I can’t help but laugh, just a little. “Just the one,” I admit. “I mean it, Julian, if you’re up for it. Though, unless you want to take the very high chance of Asra walking in on us, we might want to pick somewhere other than my place. Knowing him, he’ll be up waiting for me until at least three.”

“Aren’t you afraid he’ll be worried?”

Yes. No. “He worries about me constantly already,” I sigh, knowing it to be true. “And he’s gone all the time. I think he can manage one night at home without me, a taste of his own medicine.”

Julian’s jaw sets, a shadow looming over his face. I’m reminded briefly that they did have a history together, however fleetingly. The last thing I want to do is reopen old wounds, especially when I’m the one trying to get into Julian’s hands at present.

He thinks for a while, and I can practically see the wheels turning in his pretty head. “Well,” he finally sighs, an air of accepted defeat to his voice. “It just so happens that my, uh, housemate, is out for the week. If you want, we could do it at my place. It’s not much, but it beats groping around in a dark alley, especially for your first time.”

I smile, and start to gather my things.

-*-

Not fifteen minutes later, we arrive at a humble townhouse in the far end of the south district. The streets are dark, lit only by dim, flickering lamplight, and with all the uneven cobblestones and my unfortunate inability to both hold my alcohol and walk at the same time, I find myself clinging to Julian the whole way there, earning a joke about being ‘eager to begin.’

Julian opens the door using an iron key he’d tucked away into the folds of one of his jackets, and lets me step in first, always the gentleman.

“Like I said, it isn’t much, and most of it isn’t even mine, but…”

“Much better than a dark alleyway,” I agree, looking around the place. There are maps strewn about the walls, chests tucked into the corners of the two visible rooms and under end tables. It isn’t a distinctly feminine environment, per se, but I do sense a woman’s touch, and am suddenly greeted with the terrifying thought that Julian’s ‘housemate’ might very well be a romantic partner that I’m infringing on. 

It dawns on me that I never even thought to ask if he has someone else in his life. 

“Who did you say you live with?” My fingers brush mindlessly against an entry table as Julian takes my cloak. 

He coughs. “I’m… well, a woman called Mazelinka,” he says. “She took me in when I was a child, shipwrecked. She’s somewhat of a pirate, or at least she was in her heyday. She’s on a sailing trip now, though. I’m just crashing here while I’m in town.”

“You plan on leaving? Soon?”

I can’t keep the surprise out of my voice. I had no idea. I’m finding that I know very little about Julian indeed. How is it that I knew he’d be a good kisser, then? A good teacher?

He shrugs, and gestures for us to walk a bit further in the house. “I came here to find something, I don’t intend on leaving until I do. But that’s besides the point and not the reason why you’ve graced me with your presence on this fine night.”

His grin, while genuine enough, is pained. _Change the topic_ , it begs. 

I comply. 

“I thought we weren’t flirting,” I laugh, turning over my shoulder. 

“Old habits, love.”

We both pause at that for a moment, perhaps startled by the suddenness of it all. Like many other things, including my tiny bit of guilt for leaving Asra alone with no knowledge of when or if I’ll be back, I brush it aside, and scan the room for an ample place to sit and spread out. I’m not exactly sure what Julian’s plans entail, but judging from the sole couch and its spare pillows and blankets suggesting that it is already occupied as someone’s bed, I doubt that we’ll have enough room, what with Julian’s lanky limbs to consider. 

“Would you like to take it upstairs?” Julian asks sheepishly. “Maze has insisted on giving me her bed for my little stay here and it seems a pity to let it all go to waste.”

I raise my eyebrow. “She won’t mind?”

“No. And, well… no use beating around the bush. It wouldn’t be the first time I’ve done it - invited someone over, that is. I wash the sheets afterwards, of course. I am a _doctor_ , you know.”

I try and stifle a laugh, a nervous one. It still feels wrong, getting frisky in someone else’s bed, but when I let Julian lead me up to a sort of loft, I find that the space has very much morphed into his own. Notebooks in his defining handwriting rest along with some oil lamps on the windowsill, flames flickering softly. A few spare articles of clothing sit on a chair nearby, and though the bed takes up the vast majority of the tiny room, he’s managed to leave his mark on it as well, with neatly folded covers and an extra gray blanket thrown over the whole thing. 

“Well, _Doctor_ ,” I drawl, sitting gingerly on the edge of the bed. “Let’s hope those hands are good for more than just medicinal purposes.”

He rolls his eyes, good naturedly, before kicking off his boots and shedding his gloves and undercoat. I follow his example, leaving me in a pair of pants and a cropped, thin tank top. Like before, I find myself falling into his lap as he leans back against the headboard, and his legs spread to rest at either side of me. 

“I’m most comfortable like this,” he admits softly, drawing me closer against his chest. “You don’t mind being on top for a while, do you?”

I shift a bit, sitting on my knees. Finding myself comfortable, I shake my head once before remembering that Julian wants me to give verbal consent. 

“No, I don’t mind.”

Julian nods, and a bit later I find his hands resting on the sides of my face. “Let’s start with what we know,” he whispers, just as a few drops of rain begin to splatter against the window to our left. 

I smile, shut my eyes, and let our lips find each other, a familiar tingle running down my spine as my skin remembers the feeling of his, how _good_ that sensation is. 

I part my mouth first, inviting him in. His fingers grip my hair as his tongue invades me, and my hands fly to his jaw, feeling the muscles tense and release as he works something akin to magic, though it is different from any that I’ve ever known before. I grow more sure of myself as we go, remembering to dance, to enjoy myself in this strangely familiar, primal game. 

We manage to part long enough for a very pink Julian to mutter something, almost senseless with feeling.

“Can I… touch you?” he pants. “Your breasts?”

There are, I realize, other places on my body in need of more attention, but sure. One step at a time. 

I take his hands from where they’ve tangled in my hair and guide them down, keeping eye contact the whole time. 

“Yes.”

I mean to kiss him again, but when his hands move of their own accord, I pause, startled by the sudden sensation. He’s lifting the bulk of me from the sides, smoothing his fingers over my ribs and using his thumbs to draw me up and together, the pressure rather pleasurable. 

I return to kissing him again, though not as brashly as before, focusing just as much on what his hands are doing as where his mouth falls against mine. 

Then his thumbs brush over my surprisingly sensitive, peaking nipples, and yet something new begins. 

His hands roam gradually, his lips still kissing. They trail down, and he latches onto my collarbone, sucking gently while his hands swirl dizzying circles around my chest. It’s nice, it’s fun, but there is more that I want to do, more that I want _him_ to do. 

As if they have a mind of their own, my hips writhe beneath me. I’m self-contained from the waist down - we only touch in the area around my chest. Julian’s lips, now stuck almost painfully to my collarbone, smile at the motion, his own stilling. 

“We’ll get there,” he says, bringing my attention back to him. “But first…”

With a wicked smile and a groan of impatience from me, Julian takes my hands in his own and places them on his chest, right on the edge of where his skin and shirt meet. There’s a good chance that I’ll be touching him rather intimately, only on account of the fact that his shirt is already so open, so thin. 

_If he wants me to stop, he’ll stop me_.

I plant my mouth over his, kissing him deeply, confidently. My hands roam along the planes of his chest, the broadness of it. I dare to touch skin, and while he doesn’t stop me, I feel his intake of air as I graze over the sparse hair on his chest, working ever so slowly down to the swell of his pecs, to his hardened nipples. 

I rub my thumbs over them in a similar manner, and my lips part from his with a squelch as I latch onto his neck, sucking the way he’d just done to me. I can almost _taste_ his gasp, and keep going, a bit of spit in the path of each strict, scornful kiss I make. 

“That’s… oh, _fuck_ ,” he cries out as I half-heartedly bite him, and I pause in fear that I’ve hurt him. “No - don’t stop on my account, love, sorry. It’s quite alright.”

“Do you… like that?” I ask, trying to gauge his honest reactions based on my observations both tonight and the from last time I’d see him. “When I’m rougher with you, or when I… bite?”

Julian just stares at me for a moment as if he isn’t sure I’m real before a shiver rakes its way up his chest to his jaw. His mouth opens, then closes, gaping like a fish. 

A moment later and blushing slightly, he shuts his eye and nods his head vigorously. I lean in to kiss his bunched up lips, soft at first, but I catch him between my teeth before long, earning a whimper from him that resonates in my core.

“Perhaps, though,” he mumbles, pushing me away from him just enough to speak. “We can still save _that_ for a separate lesson. I want to focus on you.”

I raise my eyebrows at him, pulling back and inspecting my partner through half-hooded lids. I’m taller than him like this, I can look down at him laid before me. He shudders beneath my hands still on his chest, and I realize with startling clarity that, at least in this fleeting moment, I am the one in control.

The rain outside intensifies, a far off bit of thunder rumbling around in the distance. 

“Tell me what to do,” I ask in a low tone as my hips shift of their own accord, the ache between my legs growing. It is a foreign sensation, but not an unwelcome one.

Julian, to his credit, manages to keep a rather level head about it all. “You want to move lower?” he asks, seeking permission. Always, _always_ asking before doing. 

“ _Yes_ ,” I gasp, just the thought making me excited. 

With a look of concentration, Julian nods. His hands slide down my body, past my hips. He guides me so that my legs now straddle his thigh, the firmness of it adding a pleasant pressure to my heated center. His grasp settles on my waist, and he begins to rock me forward and back. 

“Grind,” he says, watching my every movement. “You can get yourself off on friction alone, like this. If you wait long enough. Roll your hips, too.”

He doesn’t sound authoritative, exactly, more suggestive, as if he’s ready to switch positions any time, to try something else or to stop all together at my own discretion. 

But, I find as the heat starts to slowly build within me, I don't want to stop. I don’t know if I ever will. I start sort of awkwardly at first, trying to gauge the right amount of pressure as I move myself back and forth. I learn to keep myself tilted more forward than back, my hands pressing into the mattress on either side of his hips as I practice different motions, eventually figuring out how to circle my hips _while_ pushing forward and back, forward and back.

“What… about... you?” I pant between breaths, intimately aware of how the rocking makes my breasts fluidly sway, punctuating my movements with a different sort of pleasure. 

“...what about me?”

“I don’t want to be the only person enjoying myself here,” I explain, each word spat out between breathy gasps I seem to have no control over making. “Though I am having a hell of a time riding your thigh, how can I take care of you?”

He blushes so profusely at that moment that I falter my rhythm, wondering what on earth I could have said to elicit such a response. 

“You really… you want to?”

I nod, stilling myself astride him and feeling my pulse pounding low at the sudden lack of motion. “Of course. I still haven’t figured out a way to thank you for doing all this in the first place, it seems only fair that I make sure you have a good time too.”

He blinks at me, holding oh so still. “What I… first off,” he clears his throat. “You don’t need to worry about thanking me, this is… I enjoy doing this with you. Secondly… what I might suggest will blur the lines between the bases a little.”

He waits.

I consider. 

I certainly don’t want to run out of things to do, and I’m not sure I’m ready for full on sex just yet, but… I trust him. And maybe it's the drink I barely remember finishing, maybe it's the near-constant thrums of thunder outside, or maybe it's the fact that I want to do something without Asra’s approval, something he won’t get to know about or chastise me for. Maybe it's something else entirely.

I brush the hair out of my face, a smile forming on my lips. “Show me,” I beckon.

Wordlessly and appearing rather solemn, Julian moves me off his thigh. He sits up a bit more on the bed, and settles me once again in his lap, although this time I am much higher up, much closer to him. I can feel his breath against my skin. His fingers dare squeeze the swell of my rear, and as he looks up at me, I feel him roll his own hips beneath mine exactly once, sending a jolt through my stomach that makes me want to clench my thighs. 

_Friction indeed_.

“Should I stop?”

I shake my head. “Don’t you _dare_.”

A surprised smile, and then he’s off, encouraging me to grind and thrust against him in kind, my hands clasping in the space behind his neck. Each pass is - fittingly - rather like another rotation on a screw, turning tighter and tighter until I feel like the wood around it will splinter apart. We are breathless, panting. The rain hits against the window to our right with an earnestness now, pounding, demanding. 

After a while, Julian slows, but doesn’t halt entirely. I can feel the pressure of him beneath me, the betrayal of his own arousal, much to my own satisfaction. “I’m… close,” he admits almost sheepishly. “I don’t want to continue unless you want this too, if you want to… finish as well, because I’m sure as hell not going to let myself come until I know you’re satisfied. If not, we can stop.”

Stopping now, I decide, would be cruel. But, as close as he says he is, I’m not sure I’m there yet. Not that I have any prior knowledge, and I am far from complaining - all these new experiences and feelings are truly sparks of magic within me. Maybe I’m just self-centered, but somehow, some primal part of me knows that I can feel _more._

I take his hand from where it's migrated to my hip and guide it down, lower and lower, watching his eyebrows raise. I settle his fingers where I need him most, feeling my own dampness through the fabric of my pants. “Will you touch me?” I ask, breathless, guided by some primal instinct I don’t remember learning. “Please? I want to finish, but… I need you to help me.”

Wide eyed, he nods, a tentative stroke against me sending a wave of budding pleasure rippling up my spine. 

“Turn around,” he says, gently guiding me so that I face the bedroom wall. “It’ll be better for you.”

In a moment, I feel his restrained erection pressing against me. One hand snakes down my front to rub at me through my clothes, and the other tenderly cups my breast, kneading and pulling in all sorts of pleasurable ways. His mouth goes to where my neck meets my left shoulder, kissing and sucking and making me cry out with the fusion of pain and pleasure and just pure sensation. Beneath me, his hips rut and roll, and he makes no effort to hide the grunts and moans welling up inside him, the sounds close to my ear and utterly delicious.

“Tell me when you’re close,” he mumbles, increasing his own pace. 

He squeezes harder, rubs faster, his long fingers pushing and prodding and making me feel so volatile, so _alive_

And suddenly, I know. I know that in less than a few seconds, that wooden board will snap with the pressure of the screw, leaving pieces of me shattered around the room. My inner thighs start to twitch, my breathing becomes hitched, uneven.

“Julian,” I gasp, feeling myself starting to spasm, the peak of my arousal drawing back like the waves on a shore about to be hit by a devastating swell. “I’m - I’m going to-”

I cut myself off with a high pitched, breathy, perfectly _obscene_ whine, jerking around without care or coordination. One of my hands grips his thigh, nails digging in like talons. The other wraps back to where his head is, reaching for his hair and pulling on it, desperate for purchase, for something to keep me tethered to this earth. His own vulgar release is muffled behind the pounding in my ears and the flesh at my shoulder, but I feel something moving beneath me, and its realize that Julian’s hips are bucking just as wildly as mine. 

I collapse backwards against his chest once I’ve ridden out my pleasure, feeling ever so light and tired and _free_ , all at once. 

“So, that was what… I just…”

I can feel Julian’s breathy laugh behind me. “Yes, you did. Rather spectacularly, might I add.”

I twist my face to look at his, at the glowiness that seems to surround him like a mirage, like steam on a mirror. For once, he looks truly happy, almost. If not a little reserved, and a little sleepy. 

I feel a stickiness between my legs, but I ignore it, instead turning so that my lips can comfortably meet his. It’s a sloppy kiss, but a genuine one. Not for learning, but for gratitude. 

Still, that doesn’t stop me from biting his lip on the way out. “Thank you,” I whisper, feeling sleep threaten to claim me in this state of utter bliss.

Julian’s awestruck expression is the last thing I see before I let the warm darkness consume me, barely aware of the trembling hand finding its way into my hair or the sensation of bedcovers finding their way around my shoulders. I know nothing but the slow rise and fall of a strong chest, and then, I quite contentedly know nothing at all.


	4. The Big Leap

If I thought that I hadn’t been able to stop thinking about Julian before, I am in for a rude awakening. 

I’d spent the night with him, riding out the rainstorm and sleeping better than I have in a very long time. He’d left the bed some time in the early morning, stirring me slightly from my rest but not for long. I awoke again what must have been several hours later to the smell of coffee overpowering the smell of soap, and when I fumbled my way half-dressed and tender down the stairs, I was met with a freshly bathed Julian serving me breakfast and insisting that it was ‘the nice thing to do’ when dealing with a one-night stand and jokingly encouraging me to take notes for my future partners. 

He didn’t look at me when he said that last part. He was busy flipping eggs and trying not to burn bacon. It was for the better, for if he’d been watching me then I’m sure that I would have broken, made some sort of grimace at the mention of _other_ partners. Even now, over a week after it happened, the thought of anyone else seeing me so vulnerable makes me feel hollow, nervous. Not to mention that we hadn’t even gotten our clothes off yet - I can’t imagine baring myself entirely to a stranger - it’s hard enough to think of Julian seeing me entirely naked for the first time as it is.

Asra hasn’t really helped either. When I made my way back to the shop around eight in the morning, early enough to shower myself and open the place on time, he was still waiting for me, and clearly hadn’t slept since I’d seen him last. 

“You’re okay,” he gasped upon my entrance, jolting up from his place on the sofa. He stopped himself short of running to meet me, however, instead taking in my rumpled clothes, messy hair. Smudged makeup. Thankfully, a few of Julian’s more... uh, _passionate_ marks had vanished from my neck. He himself had been littered with mine in the morning however, including ones I didn’t even remember bestowing. 

He’d worn them like badges of honor. 

Asra’s scrutinizing eyes hadn’t missed a thing, however, and he soon crossed his arms and fixed me with a measured, almost offended look. “Did you enjoy yourself?”

I winced. “Asra-”

“When you said you were going out for the _evening_ , I assumed you meant to return.”

“I did return.” My voice was small, timid. 

Asra shook his head. “I’m… I was _worried_ about you,” he stressed. “Vesuvia can be dangerous alone at night, I thought…”

I tightened the grip on the bag slung over my shoulder, looked away. “I didn’t mean to worry you, but I can take care of myself.”

“ _Obviously_.” The tone of his voice unnerved me, the sense of betrayal mixed into the hurt. “I’m going to bed,” he said. “I assume you slept well. You open the shop today.”

He’d apologized later, of course, with a hug and a kiss on my forehead and a loaf of bread fresh from Selasi’s stall. He’s always good at that. And yes, I felt guilty enough to apologize as well, but I made no promises to not disappear again, though Asra’s particularly tight watch on me over the next few days makes it difficult. I really can’t get Julian out of my head or the touch of him off my body. He’s even in my dreams, strong and lithe and trembling before me as I imagine what our third lesson will entail, as my body fabricates the sensation of his touch, of his pressure as he finally sheathes himself inside me. I wake up sweating and aroused in a tangle of sheets on more than one occasion, and I learn to cast a _very_ strong muffling charm over my room before drifting off after Asra came in once to wake my moaning self from what he thought was a nightmare, much to my own abject mortification. 

I do my best to keep my wits about me, in the shop at least. When I’m in my apartment, all I can do is look at the loveseat and remember what Julian tasted like, how he felt between my hands-

I look at the stout, hardy woman I’m supposed to be helping, fighting the blush that rises to my cheeks. 

“I’m so sorry, what was it you wanted?”

The woman laughs, a spitfire sound that shows off a missing tooth. “Valerian root,” she reminds me. I hasten to grab it from the shelves, glad to have something to do with my hands other than clench them uselessly at my sides as I try and banish the feeling of Julian’s hair from them. 

_Make polite conversation, distract yourself_. “What will you be using it for?”

“I put it in a stew, helps my Ilyushka sleep.”

She directs me to scoop out a heaping portion of the rather potent stuff, and my brows raise of their own volition. “Your Ilyushka must have the constitution of a bull if you need that much to knock them out.”

Again, the woman cackles, fishing around in a coin purse after I’ve allotted the desired amount. “He’s a headstrong, lovesick fool, that boy. Always raving on about some useless matter of the heart or other. This time he’s got it bad, though.” Shrewd brown eyes flicker up at me amusedly. “You wouldn’t happen to have a cure for lovesickness?”

I sigh, having been pondering the question ever since I returned from my most recent romp in the hay. “Believe me, I wish. I could use some myself to be quite honest.”

From the tarot reading room to my left where Asra is supposed to be napping, I swear I hear the faintest, surprised thud. 

Coins are gently pressed into my hands by warm, rough palms. “I have a feeling you’ll find your cure sooner than you think,” she winks before heading off. 

As soon as the door closes, Asra’s fluffy head peeks out of the partitioned alcove, parting the curtains and not looking at all tired. “Who was that?”

I shrug, putting away the coins and keeping note of our lump sum for the day. “No idea, some customer who wanted valerian root.”

He doesn’t speak to me for the rest of the afternoon, opting to eat dinner out instead of with me. I can’t decide if he’s still mad for me going off and not telling him when I planned to return home or if he’s somehow figured out who exactly has been stealing my attention away from him and my work. 

The next morning, he informs me quite coldly that I’ll have the apartment to myself for a week as he needs to go off to somewhere he only refers to as his ‘retreat.’

I try pressing him for more information, but he relents nothing, leaving me with my arms crossed and leaning against the doorframe of my room.

“Don’t look so glum,” he sighs. “That’s more information than you gave me the last time you went away.”

Something in me snaps. “What, so you’re allowed to go off and have adventures but I’m supposed to be stuck here alone all the time?”

He has the audacity to look surprised. “You know I’ll take you with me if you want.”

“What if I want to go off on my _own_ adventures?”

I don’t say _without you_ , but for all the malice in my voice I might as well. 

“You should have told me you were seeing someone - I just want you to be safe-”

“You just want to _shelter_ me, Asra. It’s smothering.”

Asra blinks, fidgets with the hem of his shirt. “I just don’t want you to get hurt,” he whispers softly. “After everything you’ve been through… you deserve to be happy, to be safe. That’s what I _really_ want for you.”

I don’t know why, I truly don’t, but his words make me want to cry. 

He looks like he wants to reach for me, to comfort me the same way he used to all those months ago when I could barely function, could barely think. 

I step into my bedroom and shut the door before he even has the chance, flicking up a quick muffling spell to silence my choked, confused sobs. 

I hear his footsteps down the stairs, hear the door close as he leaves for the market. The shop isn’t open today, and for once, I’m dreading all the free time to myself, my lonely, confused self who can’t seem to get a grip on any of my fleeting emotions. 

An idea forms in my head, and I’m going about executing it before I can rationally stop myself. I find some spare paper, a feathered quill, some ink. I scribble down a half-frantic note asking if Julian is free tonight, if he wants to continue our lessons. I wouldn’t have had a way to send it before, but now after seeing his room, I can teleport the thing with some accuracy just by visualizing the spot on his messy nightstand where I want my note to appear. I fold it up, scrawl his name on the front, and send it away with a poof of purple smoke, praying that it doesn’t get lost among his countless other letters. 

All that’s left for me to do now is sit and wait and hope that I get some form of reply before Asra returns and I have to explain myself even further. Already the guilt of pining so furiously over his ex is eating me alive. I had promised myself that I wouldn't catch feelings - I’d sworn as much to Julian when I made the proposition in the first place. 

I can’t help but wonder if I’d really managed to fool myself into thinking that was true, that I didn’t already have some deep seated attachment to the man before all of this happened, if my little scheme wasn’t just a clever excuse for me to get near someone I’m not supposed to know, not supposed to love. 

_Gods_ , I think, hearing my own thoughts clearly for the first time in a month. I _do_ love him. All it took was a few good kisses and some nimble hands and I’m head over heels.

That thought, paired with the fact that I probably mean absolutely nothing to Julian in return other than as some poor, inexperienced creature for whom he pitied makes my stomach clench, twist. _I shouldn’t have sent the letter_ , I curse, getting up off my floor and away from my little corner of despair. _I need to move, do so something, anything -_

A rapping at my window, a great loud caw.

_Malak._

My hands are shaking as I undo the latch, making it take twice as long as it should. Malak flaps inside with an air of indignation, though he tilts his head at my paled, tear-stricken face. There’s a note tied with red string to his foot, and I reach for it, earning myself a light peck on the hand for taking too long.

I forget to breathe as I unfurl the note, squinting as if something horrid is going to jump out. 

_Sorry, not today. - J_

Malak flies off with a squawk when he realizes I’m not going to send anything back, and I’m left to lie on my bed, my mind spinning and circling around the vague rejection, on what it could mean. 

“He doesn’t want me,” I gasp, clutching the note to my chest, trembling with my own sobs. >em>Not the way I want him.

-*-

I’m not awake when Asra leaves, and it’s probably for the best. I can’t bear to get into another argument today, not when I’ve spent the entirety of it huddled in bed sobbing like a fool. So much for enjoying my day off. 

Eventually I pry myself from the bed, taking a blanket with me and shuffling morosely to the kitchen where I ask the fire salamander beneath the stove to please get warm enough for a cup of tea while I rub at my burning, watery eyes. I fill up the kettle, wait for it to steam. 

There’s a hesitant knock on my back door. 

I ignore it. 

It comes again. 

_Fine._

Assuming it’s Asra and that he forgot something in addition to the shop key or that he’s somehow managed to miss his boat out to wherever he’s going, I stalk down the stairs still wrapped in the blanket and not giving a damn about my appearance. I don’t bother to check his aura before I swing open the door, not caring to sense his hurt and protective instincts shifting into overdrive. I keep my gaze fixed on the floor, on…

A pair of black leather boots that go up and up and-

“I’m so sorry for the hour,” Julian says, shifting his weight. “But I felt like I owed you more of an explanation as to why-“

I finally drag my eyes up to his face, hit with all the emotions I’ve tried to suppress over the past week and failed miserably. His own widens in shock as he takes in my haggard appearance, my splotchy face and blanket wrapped shoulders.

“Have you - you’re _crying_.”

I shake my head vehemently, blinking back the onset of traitorous tears. “No, I’m - it’s not…”

_Fuck._

Julian stands there, looking helpless for a long moment before muttering something about bad timing and meaning to turn away.

“No,” I manage, grabbing onto his wrist. “I’m fine, really, I just got into a fight with Asra. He’s gone now, so that’s over, and you came all this way across town in the dark and-“

The tea kettle upstairs begins its shrill whistle, making us both jump.

Despite Julian’s protests, I drag him inside, up to the kitchen. I don’t care if nothing happens tonight, I just want to have someone here, or so I tell myself. Really I just want Julian, selfishly. Even just for a few minutes. I find that I physically ache for his closeness. 

_Who knew I’d be getting lessons in heartbreak as well as sex?_

I pour the tea with shaking hands, still wrapped in my blanket and feeling Julian’s nervous gaze following me as he stands fidgeting in the middle of my living space. 

“Sit down,” I call over my shoulder, trying to pull myself together by focusing on the mundanity of my task. “Can I get you tea?”

“That’s…” I can tell he wants to protest. I can also tell that no matter what he says, a cup of steaming ginger tea will find its way into his hands regardless. 

He seems to realize it too, because he slowly lowers himself into a seat at the small kitchen table looking like he’d rather be anywhere else.

I slide him the steeping tea, adding honey and cream into my own. I offer him the same, but he rejects it, politely. 

I sit there, sipping the tea, letting the steam soothe my burning, swollen eyes and the scalding heat of it burn my tongue, let it silence me. 

“What was it you wanted to say?” I finally ask once my cup is half empty. 

Until now, Julian hasn’t even touched his. “It… can wait,” he says decidedly, slurping the tea and avoiding my gaze.

I’m too tired to argue with him about it, to argue about anything. I feel drained, empty. 

Horribly, terribly sad. 

“Do… do _you_ want to talk, though?” he asks tentatively, putting the tea down and staring at me solemnly. 

I bite my lip, shake my head fiercely. 

But that doesn’t seem to stop me.

“I’m sorry,” I blabber, finally breaking. “I- I didn’t mean for you to see any of this, I thought I could keep it all in when I sent you that letter. Listening to my worries isn’t why I wanted you to come over in the first place - I know it isn’t part of our arrangement.”

Julian’s hands find mine as they reach to cover my embarrassed face, squeezing until I look at him. “There doesn’t have to be an arrangement for this. I’ll be your shoulder to cry on any day of the week. Just ask me and I’ll be here.”

I blink. Sniffle a bit. 

And then it all comes flooding out. 

I tell him about the fight, about how _hurt_ Asra looked. His thumbs stroke the back of my hands, urging me on. I mention how Asra means well, how I _know_ that he does, but how he’s smothering me, trying to keep me from dangers that don’t exist. Making me feel _guilty_ for trying to explore on my own, to experience _certain things_ on my own. Julian stands up at one point, guiding me to that infamous loveseat as I tell him I hope Asra isn’t jealous, that he doesn’t have feelings for me, his poor, naive little apprentice who, for all he knows, has never been kissed, never been in love. That I haven’t broken his trust by not being fully upfront with him about things that I barely understand myself.

I don’t tell Julian what’s _really_ hurting me, though. That his kind words of reassurance and soft breaths in my hair wound me just as much as they comfort. His hands rub my shoulders, my back, two steady sources of affection amidst my rocky sobbing, my shaking ribcage. When I’ve run out of things to say, Julian turns me around, wipes my tears and presses me to his chest, unknowingly only making me cry harder. Gods, it’s an ugly cry too, a painful, heaving release that leaves the front of his shirt soaking wet and me feeling horrendously guilty. 

“I just want to prove that I’m capable of making my own decisions, that I’m not some fragile thing who needs to be looked after constantly, that I’m ready for _more_.”

I realize that I’m not just talking about Asra, but to my horror, Julian _stiffens_ beneath me as soon as the words have left my mouth. 

I look up, worried. His face has gone pale, his eye wide. “What?”

He swallows, looks away. His hands on me tighten for a second before he lets go. “Am I… was all this, the kissing, the lessons… was that all just a way to get back at Asra for sheltering you? To prove him wrong?”

_No, of course not,_ I want to scream. 

But I pause.

And I think. 

It’s the best excuse. The best way to lie, to convince Julian that I’ve held up my own end of the bargain, that I haven’t caught feelings for him. That all this crying isn’t because I know I’ll never be able to have Julian in the one way that really matters the most - romantically. 

I hiccup once, feeling hollow. Hating myself, I speak. “And… if I say that it is?”

Julian is quiet for a long, long time, staring at the space above my head with a blank expression. I watch him, terrified. Had he been screaming or crying or throwing me off himself, at least then I would know, I would be able to move on. But Julian does nothing except utter a long, heavy sigh and pull me back against his chest. 

“I suppose it’s for the best,” he mutters. “Serves me right, anyhow,” he adds, softly enough that he most likely doesn’t intend for me to hear. 

“Y-you aren’t mad?”

_Gods_ , I sound so hopeful. _Please be mad, please tell me you love me so I can finally admit the same._

“You were upfront. No feelings, just learning. Just exploring this adventure for yourself,” he says almost bitterly. The hands on my back are loose, pliant. Utterly unfeeling. “I came tonight to say that I thought things might be getting a little too emotionally involved. That is the reason why I turned you down despite obviously having the time to swing by anyway. I wanted to know where you stand on… well, on matters of the heart, and now I do.”

“And… where do you stand?” I whisper. “Did you… did _you_ feel too involved or-”

Julian sighs, sadly. “It’s a habit of mine, to fall for my partners. Really, I should thank you for keeping me in my place, it’s better for us both this way, I think, with my knowing I should give up on such frivolity and get over you early.”

_...Fuck._

I hear silence, I feel like I’m going to just pop out of existence, if the very air around me will just swallow me whole and call it a kindness. 

_It’s a habit of mine, to fall for my partners._

I take a burning, shaking breath, extending myself past the point of return and out into open, fragile terrain. Cold, vulnerable. “And if I say that this all _isn’t_ just a way to prove myself to Asra?”

Julian goes very, _very_ still. 

He makes himself laugh a minute later, his hands resuming their circles on my back, in my hair. _Nervously_. “Then I would have to warn you what a mistake falling for me would be. I had a whole speech written up on it, actually. I was… if it came to it, I was going to recite it all tonight, make you see just how much safer it is to keep this whole ordeal light, purely physical.”

I swallow, pull apart. I don’t look at him, not yet. “What if I said that I didn’t care if it was a mistake?”

After a silence, my eyes flicker up to his, warily.

“I’d call you a fool,” he gasps, staring down at me with the most tormented expression.

I lean closer, tilt my head back. Try not to focus on his lips. Fail. 

“And if I wanted to kiss you anyway?”

He exhales, shaking. His voice is hardly more than a whisper of soft air on my skin.

“I think I’d be powerless to stop you.”

I leap off the cliff, freefall into the water a thousand feel below. Press my tear-stained lips onto his, flourish in their warmth as we breach the surface of the unknown together. 

A whimper comes from the back of his throat. My hands come up to rest on his jaw, to ground myself and my tattered, flailing heart, to make him my lifeline. I need him like I need air to breathe, pressing myself closer until I can feel his chest beneath me, feel it heave and tense and collapse under the swell of us - the swell of _me_.

His hands push me off him, but not far enough. Not away.

Not yet.

“You… _want_ me,” he states with disbelief, eye glossy.

“Very much.”

“Even with the murder’s mark, the price on my head?”

I kiss his jaw. “Yes.”

He flounders, lost. “We don’t know that I’m innocent yet.”

“That excuse didn’t stop me before, did it?”I laugh once, the tears starting to prickle at me again. “Julian, I haven’t been able to stop thinking about you, not since long before our little arrangement ever took hold. Why else do you think I’m so miserable about everything?”

Julian just stares at me, equal parts awed and terrified. “I… _really?_ ”

I nod, biting my lip.

He doesn’t look like he believes me, and so I decide to remedy that. I let my hands slip down his neck, his collarbones. I part his shirt slightly, remembering the way I’d done it those weeks ago when the sunlight came in and made the world seem lighter, happier. Easier. 

Why can’t it just go back to that?

I move lower, daring to touch the waistband I’d hesitated at before, giving it a little tug and rolling my hips at the same time, my intentions abundantly clear.

Julian’s hands fly to my wrists, his face blushing. “Wait,” he begs. “Please. Not tonight. Not after…”

My heart plummets. He sits up, ripping away my lifeline, leaving me to drown. I move off him, sitting beside him instead of in his lap, wrapping my arms around myself uselessly. His elbows rest on his knees, his hands gripping at his hair. 

“I’m sorry,” he whispers, voice hoarse. “I just… I need to think. This is all … so different. If we do _that_ now… it’s not just _sex_ anymore, is it? It’s something else, something _more_.”

“Is that such a bad thing?” Gods, I sound so naive if even I can hear it. 

“It will be when I inevitably break your heart with my wickedness.”

I don’t say anything for a long time. 

My hand finds his left, pulling it away from it’s anguished grip on his unruly red hair, though he makes no move to look at me. I don’t remember when he took off his gloves, if it was when he entered or when I gave him tea, or when he brought me over to the loveseat. The black ink of his brand, the mark of his _wickedness_ stares back at me, unflinching. 

I bring it up to my lips and kiss it, once again. “I trust you,” I repeat, holding him steady. 

He scoffs. “You really shouldn’t.”

I study him, long enough that he eventually looks to me. He seems so tired, so exhausted of this talk, of this topic. He won’t be persuaded in one night, in a single conversation. That much is clear from the tightness of his shoulders, the hunch to his back. 

“Stay here tonight,” I ask, surprising myself as I change the topic. “With me.”

The look of shock on his face is genuine. “We can’t - I’m not going to -” he groans, flopping against the back of the couch and speaking through gritted teeth. “ _We aren’t doing lesson three._ ”

I’m still holding his hand. 

“I know,” I say, finally thinking clearly now that the storm of emotion and pining and love-stricken anxiety has abated, somewhat. “I’m not asking you to. That would take all sorts of contraceptive spells I haven’t taken the trouble to memorize yet, and I sure as hell would like to look a little nicer for my very first go at it.”

Julian tenses as if he’d somehow managed to forget that he’s going to be my first. Perhaps even my only, at least for a while. If I have anything to say about it. 

“What _are_ you asking, then?”

I pause, trying to think of the best way to phrase things. “Just… stay with me. Share my bed in the most literal sense of the phrase. As my friend, if not… as anything else.” _If not as my lover._

_Yet._

“Are you entirely sure that’s wise?”

_Of course not._

“I’ve… missed you,” I admit, softly. “The feel of your arms around me, of mine around you. We don’t have to do anything other than that - I promise to keep my hands from wandering. I just… I don’t want to be alone.

Julian’s eyebrows slant so that they raise in the center of his forehead and tug down on the ends. Ever so slowly, his head turns so that his good eye can rest on where our hands meet. It trails up my arm, past my shoulder and my neck, though not without lingering on the lattermost. It finally, _finally_ , reaches my own eyes, and from the heavy sigh that escapes his worried lips, I know I’ve convinced him. 

“As you wish.”


	5. Like Lovers Do

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Here's the 9,000 word reward for making it through all the previous angst ;)

We start back to back. Julian strips down to barest undergarments, claiming he doesn’t want to get my bed dirty. I sleep in an oversized night shirt that hides my body from him to make things easier for us. It takes me a long time to get used to the weight in my bed, especially when we don’t touch. It takes even longer to feel tired, despite my emotional exhaustion. 

Just when I am about to give it all up, to just accept that sleep will never come to me, something timidly brushes against my hand.

Julian’s fingers lace through mine as he sighs, apparently just as unlucky in sleep as I am. Neither of us move. My heartbeat slows, my breathing deepens.

I wake up facing the window, expecting the bed to be empty, postponing turning over to confirm it. I tell myself it will be for the best if he’s already let himself go, leave. Prolong whatever conversation we both need to have and dread bringing up at the same time. 

But he is there when I finally manage, facing me. Arms tucked into a cross on his chest, looking small and vulnerable and impossibly unhappy, even in sleep. 

I stare at him for what feels like a year, memorizing the planes of his face, wondering if it will be the last time I get the chance to do so, to wake up next to him.

I resist the urge to kiss his forehead and instead slip away from the warm sheets, from the bedroom. I change in the bathroom, selecting casual clothes. I brush out my hair, wash the salt trails from my tearstained face. 

I go to the kitchen, start a pot of strong coffee over the salamander’s heated stove. Julian’s preference, if I recall correctly, is to take the drink black. There’s a bowl of fruit in the fridge, and I set it on the kitchen table once I’ve cleared away the abandoned teacups from last night, judging it to straddle the line between casual and caring.

Julian stumbles out of the bedroom just as I set two big mugs on the table, his hair a wild mess and his shirt only barely hanging onto his frame. His shoes are nowhere to be found. 

“You didn’t have to do this,” he grimaces, sitting down only after I’ve gestured for him to.

“You’re a guest,” I shrug, filling his mug. “I’d do the same for any other.”

This, at least, seems to placate him. Neither of us mention that I wouldn’t have shared a bed with any other guest. Neither of us say anything at all, in fact. I’m suddenly very interested in watching the creamer in my coffee swirl around with the motion of my spoon as I spin it round and round and-

Julian clears his throat. 

I realize that my coffee is no longer warm. 

“I suppose there isn’t much of a bush to beat around,” he says, drawing my attention. 

“No, I guess not.”

We each stare at the table for a moment. 

“My feelings haven’t changed,” I say, my mouth feeling too small for the importance of my words. “It wasn’t… a spur of the moment confession. I still… want to be with you.”

Julian shakes his head. “I know. I know you do, but…”

_But_.

_Of course there’s a but._

“I can’t do both,” he sighs, leaning back in his chair and looking at me evenly, as if expecting me to understand.

Maybe it’s my inexperience, maybe it’s my frazzled nerves, but I have no idea what he means. I tell him as much, and he sighs. 

“I can’t have a romantic relationship with you as well as a physical one. Or rather, I feel I can _only_ agree to something purely physical.”

My tongue seems to have gone quite dry. “I thought you said… yesterday, that you’d fallen for me as well. That you fall for all your partners - did that not include me?”

“It does,” he says evenly. “That’s the problem.”

“How is that the problem?”

Once again, Julian’s hands find their way into his hair, messing it up further. “Because if we take… whatever _this_ is between us further, if we give it a name and nurture it into fruition, it’s only going to hurt more when it all comes crashing down around us. Be it in a week or a month, it will happen, and it. Will. _Hurt_.”

He says it as if he’s felt the pain more intimately than I could possibly know, as if every time he’s allowed himself to admit his feelings, to become close to someone, they’ve taken him, used him, and left him to suffer as they moved on, left him to feel worthless, wicked. 

Alone.

“Are you really willing to carry on as if last night never happened?” I ask, incredulous. “Just pretend that neither of us have caught feelings for the other and fuck me like it isn’t the biggest lie we’ve ever told?”

Julian flinches at my swear, but I am resolute, unwavering. I’m not mad, necessarily, but I need him to see how pointless his proposition is, how much suffering doing something like that would cause. 

“I can offer you no other alternative to it than ending this all for good. I did ask in our original agreement that if either one of us would have the ability to stop whenever without any question. If you can’t accept that this remains a strictly physical relationship, then I have to insist we stop.”

My mouth falls open. I feel heat rushing to my face. “Are you so committed to your own unhappiness that you’re going to turn down someone who returns your own sense of affection?”

“You can’t possibly understand what I feel,” he snarls, hands pressing flat on the table. “Do you know how long I’ve been wanting you to notice me? To kiss me like you did that first week, to touch me like you did the next? How every second I spend with you is a torturous effort not to let myself melt into you, to beg you to have me, to love me despite all my many, _many_ shortcomings? My darkness?”

“Don’t you know that I would do it in a heartbeat?”

My voice is so soft, so quiet. Hurt, even, but sure. Steady.

Julian goes pale as a sheet. “Don’t,” he gasps. “Don’t say that, don’t give me _hope_.”

He stands in a quick motion, the chair behind him skittering noisily against the floorboards. I rise myself, watching as he starts to pace, to grip at his hair. 

“Julian-”

“No,” he mumbles, hand shaking over his mouth. “No,” he repeats, turning to me with a wild look in his eye. “You don’t actually love me. You can’t _possibly_ \- I must have tricked you somehow, this is all so new that you must have-”

“ _Julian_.”

He stops. 

I make it to him in two strides. 

I grasp his face between my hands, pull him down so that his eyes are level with mine. 

“You are not wicked,” I state, staring at him fully, unabashed. “You can deny it all you want, but if you were, you never would have kissed me so tenderly. You never would have held me so gently, so considerately. You never would have waited, let me take things slow, let me explore, especially if you were wanting to take me long before I ever asked you to.”

Julian swallows, looking like he might shatter any minute. 

“You make me feel like I’m alive, Julian. After months of just existing, of barely knowing who I am or what I’ve done, you make me _want to live_ , to see what else this life has in store for me.”

His hands brush over yours, feather light and only for the briefest moment. “But… the murder, the-”

“We don’t even know if that was you,” I remind him. “For all we know it was me - it’s not like I remember what I was doing when it happened. It doesn’t reflect on you, Julian. It never has. _This_ ,” I move a hand to his heart, almost surprised with how fast it’s beating beneath his skin, beneath my fingers, “is all that matters. And it is good, and kind, and perhaps a little more broken than I realized when I first asked you to agree to teach me, but… it’s something I _want_.” 

Tears threaten to spill over, left from last night’s sadness which never really went away, and I have to blink them back again. 

“Please,” I gasp. “ _Please_ don’t take it away from me. Don’t leave me alone in all this.”

Julian’s face blurs in my sight for a moment. I can’t catch his expression, but he moves closer, closer. 

I’m falling off that cliff again, spiraling down into darkness and uncertainty and-

And his lips catch me like a parachute, tugging me up and making my stomach follow a second or so later. 

I arch my back against him, and his hands find their way to the small of it, pressing me into his chest as we dip, as he bends. My arms fling up around his neck as if we weren’t already touching enough, as if every conceivable inch of my body isn’t finding purchase on his. 

“I’ll ruin you,” he pants, one final, desperate attempt to postpone the inevitable, to stop himself from experiencing something so good.

“I’m counting on it,” I snort, tugging on his hair and earning a needy moan as that glorious, self-deprecating mouth latches back onto mine, as his tongue asks me to let him in, to let him be a part of me. 

I fall into the familiarity of the action, spurred on by the new addition of a Julian who is unrestrained this time, no longer held together by the ruse of a lesson, of needing to go slowly with me. I’m aware that our legs are moving, and I let myself be dragged along for a moment before realizing that _no, we are not going to the loveseat_. 

_We are going to the bedroom_.

Using my arms already latched around him, I jump so that my legs wrap around his hips, and Julian’s hands expertly find their way beneath me, squeezing that place where my ass and thighs meet of out excitement and perhaps arousal, if the pressure against my core is anything to go by. 

We hit the bed, Julian going down first and rolling us so that he ends up on top, legs finding purchase on either side of mine, his hands trapping me between him like a cage.

“I’m a pirate,” he murmurs, kissing my forehead. “A scoundrel.”

“A doctor.” My hands touch his chest. “A healer.”

“A coward.”

“Oh please.”

Julian smirks, drawing out of himself, out of the moment. 

“A masochist, a self-flagellating fool.”

“Is that a promise?”

His brow raises. “Have you been studying, dear heart?”

“Perhaps. I wanted to be prepared to best please you, after all.” _True_ , I think happily.

Julian shudders, is forced to look away.

“I _want_ you,” he says, sitting up, sitting away from me. “But not like this. Not for your first time.”

My temper flares again, my disbelief at having to do yet _more_ convincing.“Are you fucking-“

“You misunderstand,” he rushes, the words quick and reassuring, punctuated with a chaste kiss to my newly sought out hand. “You’ve managed to persuade me quite thoroughly, I promise you. I may be a masochist in my own right but even I can’t deny myself the pleasure of taking you in that way. I’m not _quite_ that cruel,” he laughs. “But I want it to be special for your first time. Like you said, you haven’t done the contraception spell, I haven’t… I didn’t prepare everything the way I’d like. You deserve a bed of rose petals, my love. Candles, wine, the finest oils to ease the pain, the shock. Silk sheets and soft words murmured into your hair. I want to _experience you_ , to take you like a lover. I don’t just want to fuck, I never have. I don’t think I ever really intended to, despite what I may have told myself.”

“You don’t need to make it fancy, to go to all that trouble,” I say, blushing and still leaning against the pillows. “I’ll be afraid to mess up if we make a huge deal out of it.”

Julian just smiles, tilts his head as he looks down lazily at me. “Trust me. It will be well worth your patience.”

“This isn’t just an excuse for you to run away again, is it?”

I can’t look at him while I ask it, a silly, half serious question that I can’t seem to shake. 

The bed sinks on either side of me once again, and Julian finds my lips for the second time this morning, soft and insistent and so very reassuring, so very safe.

“No,” he whispers. “I promise you, it isn’t.”

“How long do I have to wait?”

His lips smile against mine, his eye lidded and hidden behind lashes. “I have to go to the market, pick up some things. You have a business to run.”

“ _Julian_ ,” I whine, utterly impatient, especially with him so damn close.

He breathes, pulls away with a final, tantalizing kiss. “Tonight.”

Then then he’s gone, flashing a grin over his shoulder and scooping his boots up from the floor before skipping out into the hallway and down the stairs. 

I listen to him fumble with his clothes, leave. For a long while, I just lie there on the bed, the faintest scent of Julian on the pillow next to me. _Tonight_.

I don’t think I’ll ever stop smiling.

-*-

I make a market trip of my own, later. I run the store first, of course, sell my goods. The busy day helps to distract me, at least, but on my allotted lunch break, I dash into the streets, trying to stay low, hidden. After all, I want my little excursion to be a surprise, and should I run into Julian on the way, it would very much be ruined. 

I’ve seen the shop before, a dimly lit place with incense wafting tantalizingly out the curtained entryway. I’ve never dared enter - never had a reason to. I take a breath, muster up the courage to go in, and realize with a great sense of relief that this is perhaps the one store where I will _not_ be finding Julian.

“Welcome,” a low, soothing voice says as a woman with midnight hair swept into a braid walks into my vision. She’s swathed in beautifully embroidered silk with an arrangement that shows her delicately pierced midriff. “Can I help you?”

I can’t help but blush. I look around quickly, at all the displays, the beautiful, sensual cuts of fabric, and feel utterly lost. 

I admit as much to the shopkeep, and with a warm laugh, she takes me by the hand and shows me to a fitting room. Nimble fingers take my measurements, and after getting a sense for what general idea I have in mind, she returns with a few selections.

“Now red is lovely, but it might be a bit strong,” she says, laying down a lacy thing with padded structure and flamboyant charm. “Gold is regal, and quite popular this season.”

Her hand skims over a more intricate piece, making its small amber gems sparkle like sunlight. 

“Do you have a favorite?” I ask, looking over a few other options as well.

The woman thinks for a while, smiles. “Just a moment.”

While she is gone, I hold up some of the lacy undergarments to myself in the fitting room mirror, trying to get a sense of what would look good, natural. What Julian might light to see me in. I didn’t realize how many options I’d have to pick from, how many different cuts of fabric there are, the different effects that each of them have. 

The shopkeep returns, knocking on the partition before entering. “This,” she says, laying out a set of the prettiest blue I have ever seen, “is my favorite.”

I take the set from her hands, admiring it. It’s a more substantial piece, with full cups that promise lift and support and enough fabric around the band to have royal blue gems dangle tantalizingly down my ribs, glimmering like raindrops amidst the cobalt lace of the set. 

“Can I try it on?” I ask, already knowing that this is the set I want, with colors that reminds me of a certain beautifully poisonous flower Julian had once shown me on a more eventful night out back when we first met. 

The shopkeep smiles once more and leaves me to it. 

When I see myself in it, I can’t help but grin, toss my hair a little. Feel both utterly ridiculous and oddly sensual. 

I leave the store a happy customer.

-*-

It’s an effort to focus on work, on something so horrendously mundane. I’ve donned my purchase beneath my clothes, and each move of the hidden gems along my skin reminds me of what I wait for, of what is to come. The support of the bustier is more than I’m used to, and the way it holds me up reminds me so much of my favorite pair of hands in the same position that it is, infuriatingly, all I can think about. 

I cannot be more relieved when I finally get to close up the shop. I’ve made contraception potions and spells before, so it quick work to concoct something of my own. A few herbs, a base in a sealant charm. Peppermint for taste.

I’ve only just swallowed it when I hear a chipper, familiar knock at the back door of the shop.

_Finally_.

Julian greets me with a doting, warm smile. He has a shopping bag in his arms which he sways to one side, allowing me just one kiss before pulling away. “Come now,” he says, fondly. “Save some for later, dear heart.”

My stomach flutters at the term of endearment, at how quickly he’s taken to calling me by them, as if he’d always referred to me as such in his head and is only now getting the chance to use them aloud. 

I give him a peck on the cheek, just barely relenting and earning a laugh. 

“I just have a few more things to finish down here,” I say, gesturing to the herbs still on the table and a few other miscellaneous items in need of tidying. 

“How convenient,” Julian jostles the bag. “Because I have a few things to set up, if you will be so kind as to grant me access to your boudoir.”

Curse him and his quirked brows, that crooked grin tugging on the base of my spine, making me _feel_ things. 

“The door’s unlocked,” I say, pulling back before I lose the ability to stop myself entirely. 

“Lovely. Give me no more than ten minutes.”

Julian leaves with what I, somehow, know is a wink despite his ever-present eyepatch, and I shamelessly let my eyes trail his form up the stairs, frowning at how much is covered by his heavy coat. 

_Ten minutes_.

I can wait ten minutes, or so I tell myself as I put away herbs, dust off counters. It takes all of three to do, and I’m left with seven to wonder at what tonight will bring. If I’ll be awkward, or terrible, or if Julian will take one look at me naked and decide it’s not worth it. Silly things to worry about, especially when he’s made himself so abundantly clear on how much he wants me, even if it is to be my first time. Even if I have no idea what I’m getting myself into. 

I’ve been worrying about it all with my bottom lip between my teeth, leaning against the counter and staring off at the wall. Has it been ten minutes? More? I hear no footsteps in the apartment above me, so I can only assume that he’s waiting for me to show up. 

I take a deep breath, and climb the stairs, each movement heightened, each brush of my thighs against the other or my passing hand anticipatory, exciting. 

Nervous, too, I find, standing outside my own apartment door, hesitating just a moment. The bag he’d brought was small enough that I shouldn’t be too surprised by what I find when I finally open up, right?

“Julian?” I call, knocking to alert him to my presence. “Are you ready?”

“Come and find out,” he says softly. 

The door creaks open, and my eyes search the room for anything out of place. Not the loveseat, not the kitchen - 

The hallway, up against the window. Just like when all of this started, with gentle kisses and whispered reassurance, the last rays of setting sunlight hit Julian’s russet curls, bounce off his unmarked, perfect skin. His shirt is fresh, though unbuttoned practically down to his navel. He leans against the wall, arms crossed contentedly over his chest, smiling lazily despite the keen look he gives me, the excitement in his eye. My bedroom door is open a bit, and I catch flickering candlelight from within. I peer in to see more, and Julian comes up beside me, placing one hand on my waist and using the other to open the door wider.

“I know you said not to go fancy,” he says, voice near my ear as I see what he’s done. “But like I said, you deserve a good first time.”

I can’t even speak a I walk in, spinning slowly around my space. The room is darkened, lit only by a few clusters of newly set up blue-flamed, magicked candles mixing in with the warmth of the setting sun and the low glimmers of my normally present bedside lanterns which cast intricate shadows on my walls with their cut-out patterns. Joining them near the edge of my bed, are a vial of what looks to be oil and a freshly folded towel. He hasn’t gone overboard, by any means, but the atmosphere is so wonderfully nice, subtle, even. The flickering light goes well with my decor, the wall hangings and bedsheets and pillows.

I’m aware that Julian is watching my reaction from the hallway still, waiting to see what I think, what I’ll say. I turn to face him, slowly, and I hope that the appreciation in my eyes is enough, for I suddenly feel that trying to speak will prove absolutely fruitless.

“I brought food, too,” he says, stepping near and with a low voice. “So you wouldn’t have to worry about it later. There’s wine as well, but… I, at least, want to do this fully sober, surprisingly.”

“No alcohol?” I joke. “Who are you and what have you done with my Julian?”

His reaction is instantaneous. His eye closes, his throat swallows.

“Say that again,” he whispers, body ever so close to me.

I close the gap, staring up intently at him, feeling both small before his tall frame and yet so full of emotion as my hands touch his broad chest that I can hardly be contained in just one room. “Say what?” I ask, my own voice low. “Call you _mine_?”

Julian shudders, nods. “Only if you mean it.”

The breathiness in his words makes my heart leap. He sounds so soft, unsure even. Just barely. I hum, pretending to consider, watching his eyebrows knit together as his eye stays shut, as if he fears rejection. As if I ever could do such a thing to him.

“You are, Julian,” I say, reaching to pull him down so I can prove it with a kiss. “You’re mine, and I am yours.”

His knees actually buckle for a moment before he gets them under control, before his lips shakily find mine and my head tips back to let him in. My mouth opens, begs him to join me. A hesitant tongue soon finds its way hungrily around mine, pushing and teasing and being ever so distracting. 

“You want me,” he gasps blissfully a moment later as if he’s still reveling in that fact from last night, from this morning. As if he isn’t sure that he can ever fully believe it.

I press my forehead to his, slide my hand across his chest again, wondering what it will be like to see him laid bare, if it will hold up to my dreams. If I can hold up to his own.

That uncertainty hits again, overpowering the desire. 

“I do,” I say. “But..”

Julian tenses, stops his hands from running circles on the tops of my hips instantly, and searches my face, instantly worried. 

“But?” he breathes, barely. 

“I am a little nervous,” I admit. “Not of you - not of doing this with you. I _want_ to do this with you.” I emphasize it with a quick kiss, a reassurance of my trust in him. “It’s just... I… don’t know what to expect, what to do.”

I feel him relax beneath me, a sigh of relief against my skin.

My eyes find the floor. “I don’t want to disappoint you.”

Hardly a moment later, Julian tilts my head up from where my chin has fallen in embarrassment. “You couldn’t possibly.”

“Even if I need to stop? If… if for some reason, I can’t… if I don’t satisfy you?”

Something breaks in his expression, some sad, impossibly personal thought passes through his head as he stares at me with an openness I’ve never before witnessed. His hands find mine, holding them tightly to his chest. “I will _never_ force you to carry on. If you need to stop - at any point, I beg that you tell me as soon as the thought arises. I wouldn’t be able to live with myself if I hurt you like that, least of all if it’s something you’d think I’d _want_ from you.”

Somehow, I knew that he’d say such a thing, kind and trembling and heartfelt and ever so reassuring. He’ll make for a gentle lover, then, despite his reputation for liking it rough, for enjoying the bites I give him and the pain I inflict. Perhaps it only goes one way then, for him. He takes pain but can’t bring it upon himself to inflict it on another.

My nervousness gradually abates as our hands release, loosen. Julian silently watches as I undress him, undo his shirt and pull it from his waistband just as I’ve wanted to for weeks. The fabric falls to the floor, and I’m left to study the planes of his chest, the tone to his trim waist, his stomach. Strong shoulders used to hauling heavy cargo and medical supplies are accented by that familiar, delicate collarbone, and his sinewy, muscled arms are just how I pictured they’d look from the touches I’ve stolen on occasion, whether it be walking home from a bar or while I’m on top of him, focusing elsewhere. 

My inspection must go on for awhile, because when I finally look back up to Julian, he’s rather pink.

“Do you… think I will suffice?” he asks, trying to be his cocky, swaggering self and coming up just short. 

I draw my lip between my teeth out of something that is decidedly _not_ a sense of worry, at least not anymore.

“You’re magnificent,” I say, pressing a kiss to that well known spot near his neck and earning a whimper.

“Hardly,” he scoffs, though I can tell that he is secretly pleased beneath the scorn, even if he’ll never admit it aloud. 

“You are though.” I kneel to fuss at the lacings in his boots, trailing my fingers down his thighs. “I never thought I’d be jealous of leather boots, but they get to feel your thighs all day,” I remark, tugging them down. “That’s rather greedy of them.”

Julian makes a choked, sputtering sound, and I realize how close I am to his waist, to what sits just below. I wonder for a fleeting second if I should make some kind of move on him there, but his hands guide me up and away from such thoughts. 

“I do believe that _I_ am supposed to be focusing on _you_ ,” he says, that swagger finally returning in full form.

“You made me wait a full day.”

His eye narrows, lip curls. “My, aren’t you proving to be a cruel thing.”

I mock frown. “Cruel? I got you a gift, you know.”

“Did you really?” The smarminess falls from his face.

I merely nod, guiding his touch to my own chest where the bustier sits expectantly. “You have to unwrap it first, of course.”

Julian’s eye is wide, darting along my chest and face alternatingly. His fingers find the hem of my shirt with a painful slowness, and I realize that I’ve never felt his touch on my bare skin before, not on my torso. There has always been a barrier, a layer between us. While I suspect that Julian will let me do everything as fully clothed as possible if I so asked, I find that I utterly crave that unknown contact and that he can’t possibly rip my shirt off soon enough. 

Slowly, so agonizingly slowly that I feel like cursing him for trying to savor the moment, Julian lifts the shirt over my torso, over my arms. When I get the chance to look at him again, at his expression, I feel my stomach dip with the intensity of what I see. 

“Starstrand,” he whispers, admiring the fabric, the colors. His hand settles on my ribs, fingers playing with the dangling gems that tickle my skin with feather light touches. I’m aware of how my breasts lift, how they press together with each inhale I take. “Deadly indeed.”

“Like it?” I ask, only half talking about the bustier.

Something shines in his eye, and he leans down to kiss the swell of my breasts right where they want to overflow from the tight cups, one right after the other. “ _You_ truly are magnificent.”

“There is more,” I preen, blushing and letting my fingers linger on the waist of my trousers. Julian’s eye follows, his hands closely after. Wordlessly, they slip the buttons, tug the zipper. My loose garment falls with a sigh to the floor, leaving me nearly naked in the set I’ve bought for him, _because_ of him. Watching his tortured, flushing face, I do a little spin, remembering how I felt in the dressing room, how I tossed my hair and laughed. Smiled. I've managed to step a little closer to the bed in the process, and staring at him directly, I sit very slowly on it, clearly inviting him to join. 

Julian exhales, allows himself to enjoy the sight, before stalking over. He bends forward, and he kisses me, deep and hard and with enough gentle force to push me into the bed. His feet remain on the floor as he leans over me, as his body presses with a truly delightful weight on top of my own. He moves from my neck to my jaw, sucking and kissing but never quite hard enough to bruise. His hands grasp mine above my head, my legs wrap up around his hips. I feel his arousal, the pressure of him against my own heated core.

He gasps when I rock my hips against him, pulling his lips off my skin a second later. “I need to get you properly wet first,” he says. “The oil will only do so much - I want to make this as painless as possible for you.”

His hand leaves mine to push at my breast, lifting it, kneading.

“What are you implying?” I ask, unable to hide desire from my voice. 

His own hips rock against mine, once, before he pulls away, sinks to his knees. Stares at me expectantly from the edge of the bed. 

_Oh_.

“Only if you want me to,” he says, a finger running in the gap that leads from my sternum down, pausing at the hem of my underwear. “I would so like to taste you.”

A shudder hits me involuntarily at that voice, at the way he’s looking at me. His finger dares to trail lower, circling on that budding spot of pleasure that he’d found last time. Sensation blooms beneath his touch, and I remember how it felt to come in his hands last time, how _good_ he makes me feel. 

I reach for a pillow beside me, prop it under my back so that I can see him work, so that I can watch. 

“Well, we have to find a good use for that pretty mouth of yours, don’t we?” I manage, lifting my hips slightly, pushing through the uncertainty of it all and just giving myself up to the man I trust. 

Julian looks pleasantly surprised for only a moment before a filthy grin spreads across his face. Delicate fingers tug the lace from my hips while he kisses the smooth skin at my stomach, and then he descends, pulling me just a bit closer to the edge of the bed. 

“Spread for me, darling,” he rasps, pushing my thighs apart. “Let me in.”

I comply, and am hit with cold air for only a moment before Julian’s mouth latches on, hot and wet and - 

_Fuck_.

Pleasure radiates up me. I feel it start at my heated, jerking hips and ripple up my stomach. It seems to pool and spiral around my nipples, making them taut beneath the confines of the bustier. What doesn’t peak there spreads to a blush that sits hotly around my face.

And that’s all only from _one_ motion, one singular flicked kiss of his tongue on me.

“Good?” he asks, his mouth still attached, his voice yet another kind of vibrating glory. 

How he expects me to answer verbally to that is anyone’s guess. I can only whimper, nod my head, and buck my hips, hoping that he’ll get the message to _keep going_.

He does. I’m a writhing mess beneath him in seconds, each sucking kiss sending me into a spasm. I had no idea just how sensitive I can be, how even the lightest touch forces my body into reactions I’ve never experienced, reactions I can barely even put into words as every touch is so new, so unfamiliar. 

His tongue slides lower, and the sensation releases some of its severity. I’m able to still, to catch my breath while a duller sort of arousal takes place as he tongues his way through my folds. _No_ , I think, able to do so more clearly now that the sensation isn’t so intense. _It’s not duller, it’s deeper_.

My body aches for him. Somehow, I just know it. Deep within me, there’s a place centrally below my hips that is throbbing, tensing. Begging for release. 

“Julian,” I call, having finally found my voice. 

He looks up, mouth separating with audible suction as he pulls away, his lips shining with my own arousal. “Yes?”

My chest rises and falls as I think of the right words to say, to articulate my desires, my needs. “More,” I rasp. “Deeper, I want… I need you _inside_ of me, somehow.”

He smiles in a scheming, contented way, and stands. I hear his knees crack with the effort, with the transition in positions, but it seems to matter not to him. He leans forward, wraps his hands beneath me, and lifts my torso up off the mattress, repositioning me against the headboard, stacked up by pillows. He joins me on the bed a moment later, kneeling before me with a tenderness that betrays his neglected erection still covered by trousers, by _propriety_. I’d make to take care of it, of _him_ , but before I can finish the thought, he’s spread me again, and while one hand runs tantalizing circles in the soft flesh at my inner thigh, the other had extends a single finger and presses it against my entrance in smooth, slow circles. 

“It will hurt, a little, when you first take me,” he explains, watching my body’s reaction with an almost clinical fascination that reminds me of his medical background. “You’ll have to stretch to fit me. I’ll go as slow as I possibly can for you, get you ready.”

The finger dares to go deeper in, and I can astonishingly feel it brushing briefly against my cervix before slipping back out, rimming around the tighter skin at my entrance.

“Can you take another, do you think?” he asks after a few more moments, gauging my every sigh, move. 

“Yes,” I say. I do start to feel some pulling as his middle joins his index, still slowly circling. His other hand once again finds my clit after a moment, gently playing with it, making me clench and relax as if on a schedule, a rhythm. 

“You’re beautiful, like this,” he whispers with a kiss to my thigh. “Truly. I’m almost content to just watch you, experience you for the first time. Savor the moment.”

His bulging pants seem to suggest otherwise. As much as I appreciate the slowness, his letting me acclimate to these new touches, I want to get him off as well - I want to make sure he enjoys himself as much as I am. He deserves no less. 

I hum as he hits a particularly sensitive spot, his fingers curling in. “Julian, this - _you_ are amazing, but I don’t want to get off on this alone,” I say, sitting up and watching him remove his fingers from me. Like his lips, they too are wet.

“Oh?” he asks, almost surprised. “What is it then that you want?”

“Let me touch you?”

His eye flickers down for a second, not really focusing on anything so much as his own train of thought. 

I sit up, wincing a little at how inflamed I feel, how eager, slick. Not bad, necessarily, just… different. Raw. 

He watches every second. My hands once again find his waistband as I bring myself to a kneel in front of him, the both of us waiting for the other to move, to accept. 

“I won’t if you don’t want me to,” I whisper, my mouth close to his ear. “After all, you’ll have to tell me exactly what to do the whole time.”

Somehow, I seem to know that he finds that idea quite appealing indeed. 

He nods once, his own fingers starting to undo the lacings in his trousers before my own join him, taking over the job.

“Just,” he begins, making me pause. “Be careful, when you start. Gentle.”

He looks sheepishly away, and I press a tender kiss to his jaw. “Of course.”

I feel him relax, and return to the laces, each pull something slow, tantalizing. Already, I can see him straining against what little support is left, and it is with great satisfaction that I finally let Julian free. 

He sighs, softly, as I tug the pants down, as he’s released. Seen. I can understand why he was so keen on preparing me first, of making sure I could take the brunt of him when ready. I can only hope that it’s been enough.

He gets the rest of the pants off himself, giving me a quick kiss before, and in a moment he’s back. Kneeling. Expectant. 

I steel my nerves and relax my hand, and with all the softness I can muster, I wrap it around his length at the base, sliding my looped fingers down to the tip and then back up.

Julian’s reaction to my feather light touch is as instantaneous as my own had been to his mouth. His hands grip my upper arms, his head hangs low, pressing into the top of my shoulder. “ _Fuck_ ,” he hisses as I start the second pump, his hips jerking of their own accord. 

My other hand goes around his back, rests on the base of his sweating neck. “Harder?” I ask, finding myself at the tip of his considerable length.

He releases a shaking gasp against my flesh, nodding. He groans as I comply, tightening my hold on the way back up, not stopping until I’ve hit his stomach. Again, his hips writhe, though I can sense that he’s trying his best to stay still, to let me explore him uninterrupted. He holds back moans, letting them sit in his throat as his back tenses with restraint. It almost looks painful, though from the way he clings to me I don’t think that I’m hurting him. At least, not in a way that he isn’t enthusiastic about. 

A while later, he lifts his head, his eye blinking in the difference in brightness as he stares up at my face looking like he’s halfway into some other world. “The oil,” he croaks. “You should… you should start getting me ready, if you still want to carry on as planned.”

The thought of feeling what rests between my fingers inserted between my legs has me faltering my rhythm slightly, earning a choked gasp from Julian as I pull away. He’s become redder with all the friction, the relentless movement. As instructed, I reach behind me, grab hold of the large vial. 

“You won’t need much,” he says, panting, heaving. His cock stands between his spread, still kneeling legs, his hands tensed on either thigh, waiting.

_For me._

With that particular thought, I take my time with uncorking the vial, smelling it curiously before allowing a bit to pour on my hand. It’s thicker than the oil I might use as a perfume, clear and scentless. Julian watches it glinting in my hand with great attention, and once I seem to have enough, I set the bottle back and inch closer as Julian is oh so patiently still. 

Somehow, I want to torment him _just_ a little more. 

“Think you can get the bra off me without spilling this?” I ask, raising an eyebrow and extending my cupped hand to the side.

Julian swallows once before reaching forward. One arm is used as support on the mattress to keep his cock away from contact with the bed, and the other snakes behind me, undoing the clasp with a single pinch of his fingers, much to my own surprise. 

“Well you seem to have done that before,” I say, watching as he slides the straps down my willing arms and around the pool of oil in my hand. 

“Need I remind you just how good I am with my hands?”

He looks confused for a moment after, as if unused to complimenting himself in such a way and fearing that he’s come across too strongly. Too bad for him, I can’t help but agree. 

“You need not,” I say, moving my own to where he yearns for my touch once again. “Though I seem to be rather interested in a different part of you this evening.”

He shudders at that and at my grasp around his shaft, slicking him up from base to tip and not neglecting any part of him for both our sakes. I take note of any veins, ridges. Wonder if I’ll be able to feel them inside me, if I have any equally enticing physical features that he’s anticipated since first feeling me earlier. 

_If I can hold a candle to any of his past lovers_.

I banish the thought, pouring all my attention into Julian, who muffles a particularly delightful cry by shoving his hand over his mouth. I decide that it won’t do.

“Julian,” I tease, slowing. “I want to hear you.”

He blinks at me, his mouth parting slightly. “ _Really_?”

I hum in agreement. “And I can think of other things your hands are better suited for.”

I look down at my bare chest, and Julian’s lip finds its way between his teeth. “I was waiting to hear you say that,” he breathes, as if he’s never been asked to be vocal before, as if no one has wanted to hear his lovely voice as proof of their fine work. 

Maybe it is as much of a first for him as it is for me, in some ways. There’s such an adoration in his gaze as I continue my pace, such tenderness to his touch as he finally lifts me skin to skin, flesh to flesh. I’m so much softer like this, so much more responsive. His hands squeeze me as mine do him, and for a moment, a perfect moment, we are in sync, each of our grips tightening just to the point of pain before releasing, relenting. Starting again. 

“Let me… know… when you want… me,” he gasps between strokes, head tilting back slightly. 

“You mean… _in_ me?” 

He nods, as if that’s all he can manage. I slow my hands with a resigned whimper from him, but once I have his gaze, I pull him in for another kiss, deep and reassuring and so very, _very_ ready. 

I let myself fall back onto the pillows, Julian following closely on top. I feel a hint of him stiffly against my thigh, hot and slick and willing. 

“I want you,” I say once he pulls back. His eye remains closed, but he smiles.

I groan as he pulls away to fetch more of the oil again.

“You’ve been so patient,” he says breathily, holding the vial just over my folds and letting it dribble down slowly. I tense at its coldness, and Julian is quick to remedy by rubbing me soothingly, the friction equally warming and arousing. 

“ _Julian_.”

“Just a few moments more, dear heart. Nearly there.”

With a decidedly _impatient_ huff that earns Julian’s barked laughter, I slump down on the pillows, staring up at the ceiling and trying to be patient. I clutch my breasts for some sort of distraction, squeezing until -

I feel him, up against me. Waiting. Watching, perhaps. 

And like he’d done earlier with his hands, he circles a bit, re-awakening the part of me that seems to have taken all the feeling from the rest of my body and concentrated it in one absurdly small region. I let him take his time, let him part me slowly and enter, just a bit. Just enough to get a sense of him, of what is to come.

It’s more intense at first, right when he breaks through. The soft internal barrier gives way, and the skin around my entrance stretches.

One of my hands finds his wrist, tightening until the sensation lessens, until I loosen a bit. 

“Is it alright? Does it hurt?”

I swallow for a moment, considering. Julian remains perfectly still as I shift my hips around experimentally, seeing if I can unstick myself somehow. 

When I open my eyes, Julian is above me, carefully reading my every expression with his already gaunt cheeks sucked in with concern. I smile at him, release my grip.

“I’m okay,” I say, softly. Reassuringly. “I just needed to get used to it for a second. You can keep going, I think. Slowly.”

He nods, a look of relief washing over him. “Please tell me if you need to stop though.”

“So attentive,” I croon, cupping his face and feeling a thrill in my stomach as he leans into it. 

Still watching, he glides his hips forward, supported on strong arms braced on either side of me, pushing down the bed and making me feel like I’m on an island, somehow, like all that exists is exactly what is below and above me. The tightness, thankfully, abides, the feeling of tearing. I _do_ feel the ridges of him entering, but everything feels almost numb for a while, and I can’t help but think that I prefer his hands until he bottoms out and the tip of him presses firmly against my cervix.

_Ohhh_.

_Nevermind_.

I don’t even realize that I voice my physical epiphany aloud until Julian sighs. “There we are,” he says, looking down at me with such loving adoration. “Again?”

“Like you even have to ask.” I sound breathy, weak. Half-strength.

And _he’s_ the reason why.

My love, _my_ Julian. He pulls out, slowly, almost entirely, and then he goes back in, a little faster this time, a little less painfully. Again, he hits that spot deep within me, the very spot that so ached to be touched before. Despite him having no more length to give, my hips roll against him, desperate for more. 

His locked elbows buckle for a second, and his back arches up in a distinctly feline manner at my action, his head turning away with a hiss.

“And I thought _I’d_ be the one to ruin _you_ ,” he chokes, thrusting again, quickly this time, hard. 

_Delightful_.

“I’d say you still have… a fighting chance,” I wheeze between thrusts, struggling to keep my eyes open. 

Julian just laughs at that, and continues. I feel every roll of his hips, the power in his legs sending the entire bed rocking back and forth with us still in it, my entire body attuned to what he’s doing - or rather, what he’s undoing. The sheets are being untucked just as much as I am becoming undone. Each moment, each thrust, I lose a little of myself in the most splendid way. Some strokes, I rut myself against him, others I just lie there, adrift. His mouth finds mine when his hips start to jerk with less rhythm, a kiss and a whimper rolled into one. 

“ _Close?_ ”

I can honestly reply, “ _Yes_.”

A hand finds its way down to that bud again, whether it’s mine or Julian’s I really can’t say. Incessant circles, thrusts. I jerk against him, so, _so_ close. I’m burning, writhing, so desperately hoping for that ache to burst, for that deepness inside me to open, swallow me whole -

And then the world disappears with a scream like a raven in the night. The very bones in my hips feel like they want to rip open, blown wide by a force that seems almost too powerful to be of this world. I feel my spine shift, arch, my jaw shoved open with that same force, not at all weakened by the distance traveled. It feels old, primal. Like the most powerful magic I can fathom, and yet not. Magic is a part of me, something intrinsic, but _this_ …

_This is Julian, too_.

As my waves abate, as I slowly slip back into the light, I feel him again, I’m aware of him. He’s continued to move even as I mentally left him for a moment, but when I open my eyes, he falters. I feel a wetness on my cheek, running horizontally from my temples. It’s all I know aside from that pleasure, aside from the final, wonderful release. The rest of me is a tingling, hot, mess, but those cool tears bring me back, make me present.

“Don’t stop,” I croak, near soundless. A smile on my face. “Let me see you.”

Again, that relief. I almost wonder if he mistook my tears for sadness, for pain. 

I cup his face again, let my touch trail to his shoulders. Each thrust is felt in my still reeling nerves, each jostle like lightning. There’s a sheen to him, making his pale skin glisten like something opalescent. I watch as his brow scrunches, as his mouth opens in a scream to twin my own.

And then I can tell that he’s gone too, for a moment. Seeing the starry night sky as I have, numb and lost and somewhere _else_.

I feel him in me even after he falls back, falls beside me, our breaths the only sounds now in the absence of screams, of passion. 

_But not in the absence of love_ , I think as I pull his prone body into mine, as I feel his tears on my collar, his hands grasping at my back. Though neither of us have said it, it is unspoken. Present. It’s the way he touches me like either of us will break, the way he murmurs my name, asks if I’m okay while his silken lips trail my arm, my neck. 

It’s the way he gently reaches down when I start to doze off, the towel set expectantly aside before now used to clean me, preserve me. It’s as if we are made for nothing else - for no one else. 

As if all the problems of the last few days - the last few _years_ are nothing, meaningless. 

“I want you,” I whisper into his hair as I’m about to dip into that inky, blissful peace once more, not even sure if he’s awake, just that he’s here. 

“Have me, then,” is his reply. “I am yours.”

“Hhm.” Contentment, bliss. “ _Mine_.”


	6. Aftercare

I’m not aware of much when I wake up. It’s one of those hazy, grayish mornings where the air is cold and all you want to do is burrow deeper into a blanket for the entirety of the day. Even so, I make to force my eyes blearily open, ready to face the day, the light. I shift a little in the bed, feeling heavy, oddly sore, and - 

And Julian is inches from me, watching me with an expression I can’t quite read. 

“Good morning,” he whispers softly. His arms are around me, weighing me down, keeping me near, keeping me warm.

I take a moment to just look at him, at his sleepy hair and fully awake gaze. I wonder how long he’s been awake, waiting so as not to wake me. Though it is only the third night that we have spent together, I realize that we’ve never woken up to each other’s presence - he’d left the first time, and I the second, filled with fear that it would not last for a third time, that he would leave me in favor of his own self-pitying melancholy.

Yet, here we are. Limbs entangled like a lover’s knot holding us together in the quiet hours before the rest of the world has awoken, before life has yet begun. Us in that space between rest and productivity where time has lost meaning but not value, for it seems to be an ambiguously endless resource but no less precious for it. 

I snuggle closer, a contented sigh on my lips still soft with the memory of him. “Good morning,” I reply, relishing in the way he relaxes into me, folds around me. My nose rests near his neck, my cheek on his collar. I realize that neither of us are dressed only as a fleeting observation, one which hardly seems to matter, not when we’re so close as to be one anyway.

“How are you feeling?” he asks into my hair after a few moments more of blessed silence. “Does anything hurt?”

“I didn’t realize your doctoring hours started so early,” I moan into him, earning a light laugh I can feel beneath my fingertips. 

“They never end, my heart, especially for you. But... truly, is everything in order? After all, we… it was, I mean…”

I lean up to kiss him, a slightly sloppy thing that lasts for an insufferably short amount of time amidst my concerns about morning breath and falling back into the heat of things before I’m fully ready, fully awake. “I’m alright. Great, even, really. A little sore, though,” I admit offhandedly. 

Julian sighs, but nods. He doesn’t let go. “That is to be expected, but I do hope it isn’t anything too terrible.” He looks almost forlorn for a moment, guilty.

_The last thing I want to do is hurt you._

“How are _you_ , though, Julian?” I ask, prodding him gently. 

He blushes, faintly, and looks distinctly away. “I’m quite content, I assure you.”

I can’t help but blink. “Are you really? I don’t think I’ve ever known you to be content.”

A wry smile, a slight shake of his head. “I can hardly believe it myself.”

I press yet another kiss to the nearest bit of him that I can reach - his shoulder, drawing another soft exhale from his parted mouth. 

It smiles, ever so slightly. “This is nice,” he begins, the words tender enough to make me feel their importance, their fragility. “Waking up next to you. Like this.”

“Like what?” I ask, oh-so-innocently, already sensing the answer. 

His hand, which has until now been resting between my shoulder blades - something I only notice when I feel the rush of cold air in the warm spot left in its absence - reaches up to brush some of the hair from my face. 

“Like… you really _do_ want me,” he says, fearful, even. “Like what you said last night mattered, was real. Was true. Wasn’t just a ploy or a result of the moment.”

“I thought you knew that it wasn’t,” I say, feeling my heartbeat start to pick up, worrying if he’d thrown out words he didn’t mean himself. 

His brow tilts, softens. “I’m just not used to it. But, I… like it, very much. This feeling.”

“Of being wanted?”

He shudders, shuts his eyes. “ _Yes_.”

“Well,” I say, pulling him in even closer, pressing him almost painfully to me. “You’ll just have to get accustomed to it, then.” 

He’s quiet for a long, long moment. “Do… you don’t really mean that, do you?”

Perhaps if he’d said it any less hopefully, I might be concerned, might be second guessing his desires towards me.

But the waver to his voice, the choke to his words…

“I’m not going anywhere,” I tell him, running my hand along the back of his neck and earning another shudder from the combined effect of both actions. “Not as long as we both want this.”

He makes a sound that I at first think is a sob, but a slight pressure against the front of my stomach hints that it might be something else entirely. Or not - tears and signs of more physical pleasures might be intertwining vines in Julian’s mind.

“You can’t just hit me with such tenderness first thing in the morning, you know,” he half-laughs, the sound thick and almost rough. “I’m a rather weak creature. I’ll come undone on that kindness alone, not to mention murmurings of _commitment_. You shall ruin me entirely with your pretty words.”

I can’t help but smile, repeat myself from a different, but somehow similar conversation. “Is that such a bad thing? Coming undone?”

“I’ve… always thought it to be,” he muses. “It’s certainly seemed to be a problem in other… relationships.”

_Maybe that’s why he’s had so many partners_ , I realize. I don’t judge him for it in the slightest, but perhaps he was always just looking for something more, for someone to share it with, to _commit_ to. I can’t possibly presume to know what goes on in his mind, how all the dark thoughts and self-loathing fit into someone who is so caring and so willing to put his own pain first to ensure someone else’s happiness - how ready he was to just smother his feelings for me, however detrimental to his own mental health, and continue our “lessons” because he thought it was all I wanted, as if his own feelings didn’t deserve consideration. Even when he’s being selfish, it’s with my best interest at heart - he pulled away because he wanted more and thought that I wouldn’t be able to give it, that I would end up hurt and guilty. Perhaps he thinks it better that way, to shoulder the burden himself so that only one person is hurt. 

Well, I think that’s bullshit. And I intend to show it. 

“Julian?” I prompt, my own voice equally rough. I shift a bit so that my face is directly before his, and ever so slightly, I arch my back so that my hips press into his front.

His eye widens for a moment, surprise delaying his soft moan, the questioning “oh” of his lips, but it comes, and I can’t help but smile. 

“Let me take care of you,” I say, rocking once more. “Ruin you with my pretty words, amongst other things.”

His breath hitches, a shaking hand falls to my hips. He looks like he wants to question me, but another press of my body to his has his doubt stifled behind his bitten lip. 

I’m truthfully too sore, too tender myself to take him in the way that I had last night, but there are obviously other means by which I can satisfy him, please him. 

I pull away enough for him to not find purchase again, though I tease him with my lips tantalizingly close to his. “Come to the bath with me,” I implore. “Let me show just how nicely I can speak, how nicely I can feel when I hold you, touch you. Have you come undone.”

He gapes at me, his face absolutely scarlet. I watch him swallow, fight himself. “I...you don’t…” he clears his throat. “I thought we _weren’t_ flirting.”

I can't help but laugh, and my arms find his hands, tugging him after me out of the bed. “I must have picked it up like you said I would.”

“Don’t you have work, other obligations?”

The poor man actually tries to bring the bedsheets with him to preserve some modestly, even as he allows himself to be dragged from my bedroom and into the hall, the bathroom. As if I hadn’t felt his arousal a moment ago and seen him utterly, gloriously bare just a few hours prior. 

I’m not quite sure where this sudden confidence has come on my part, but there's something to the way he looks at me when I tell him I’ll stay, I’ll be _his_. Some sort of craving is filled by my words which are so easy and enjoyable to give and his devoted glances that then makes me bold, makes me give into desire.

“I don’t have to open on time,” I shrug, leaving him by the large bath tub as I start to fill the water, check its temperature. “I doubt Asra ever does when it's his turn.”

I shouldn’t have said Asra’s name, I realize with a wince shared by Julian. 

“How do you think he’ll take… this?” He gestures to the both of us standing bare and, well, let’s just say ‘visibly aroused.’ 

I am determined not to let that ruin my mood, however, and so I shrug. “It doesn’t matter. This doesn’t concern him.”

Julian gives me a very doubtful look.

“This isn’t _his_ relationship,” I state firmly. “You two ended it years ago, correct? Who cares about it now.”

Julian goes to say something else, but I apparently stop him when I reach for his eyepatch, the one scrap of clothing he has somehow managed to retain this entire time. 

I’ve never seen him move so quickly, his hand flying to my wrist to stop me from undressing him. 

“You can’t bathe with it on,” I blink. 

Julian looks away. “It’s… better if you don’t see it, I think.”

“I’m not going to think any less of you.”

“It isn’t that,” he says. Truthfully. “It’s just… It’s rather unpleasant to see, I’m afraid. I don’t want to frighten you.”

I stare at him for a long while, trying to think of the right thing to say, to do. With the hand he is not gripping me with, I pull down some of his hair to cover where his patch normally rests, and with a kiss to his lips, I take the thing away. 

“You’re lucky that the rest of you is beautiful enough to distract me, then,” I mutter, placing it gently on the counter beside the sink. Julian makes a rather embarrassed sound which almost passes for “thank you,” and I turn the tap off, satisfied with the amount of water sitting within the tub and the conversation tabled for later. Another onceover of my fine companion’s body, and I step into the tub, holding his hand for balance but also to keep him from running away.

“Come in,” I prompt, starting to sit. 

He stares at the clawfoot doubtfully. “Do you think we’ll both fit? It’s going to be awfully close.”

I raise my eyebrows and rest against the cold, tall back of the tub. I spread my legs to frame either edge, and I gesture to all the empty space remaining. “I’m counting on it.”

A look of surprise quickly covered by a snarky grin. “Oho, well then, in that case…”

With an awkward lunge, Julian gets one long leg into the bath, followed by another. He follows my hands so that he sits with his back facing me, and he remains very still. 

“Lean back on me, Julian,” I drawl, reaching beneath his shoulders to find his chest. “You’re too far away like that.”

“I don’t want to crush you,” he breathes, tentatively giving in to my touch, slowly falling back.

“You won’t.”

It takes a minute, but I can feel him relax when he finally puts his full weight against me with a sigh. His arms reach up and rest on the rim of the tub, leaving _my_ arms free to wrap lowly on his slumped torso. His head lolls softly on my right shoulder, hiding his eye from my view, and he turns to one side to expose his neck to me. I’m struck by how pliant he seems, how soft against my body.

I press a kiss to his temple. “Are you comfortable like this?”

I watch his chest rise, fall. “Yes,” he breathes, the sound barely audible. 

My one hand starts to draw circles around his lower abdomen, fascinating me as I feel his muscles clench and release beneath my light touch. I dare to bring the circles lower, slightly, dipping below his hip bones, and Julian looks up at me, questioningly. 

“Are you okay with this? With me giving you more?”

His mouth parts, brow furrows. “Only if it’s something you want to do. You’re under no obligation-”

My fingers brush his twitching cock, heated by the water and from his prolonged arousal, and his breath hitches. After he makes no move to protest, I wrap my whole hand around the shaft as I did yesterday, and I begin to pump up and down, lazily. It’s different in water, more slippery, and, if Julian’s occasional jerk is to be trusted, slightly more sensitive. My other hand reaches up, gropes his chest. Everything seems sort of light to me, as if my brain is having a hard time catching up to my body, to what I’m doing. Had I known a week ago that this was in the cards for me, I don’t think I would have dared believe myself. I can feel every single motion his body makes even if my mind can’t fully register it, and I keep my pace on him deliberately slow, savoring the moment for as long as I can. There’s something sensual to the sloshing of the water against his clenched stomach, the ripples as my hand breaks the surface on occasion, as Julian’s cock hardens and the very tip of his length peaks in and out, stiff and throbbing beneath my touch. 

“You’re being so quiet, Julian,” I say darkly near his ear. “Am I not trying hard enough?”

It’s at the moment his hips first jerk up, fucking himself into my hand without restraint for one thrust only before being back under control.

“Certainly not that,” he gasps, reeling back. “Or, I mean, you _are_ \- and doing a fantastic job-”

Another slightly firmer pump on my end, and Julian’s arching against me. Some water splashes across his chest as he strains to remain still, its shine accentuating the taut muscles there. 

“What else can I do for you?” I ask, my mouth pressing up to his neck, where lips and teeth start to meet skin.

“Gods, whatever you want,” he whines, writhing above me. “Just don’t stop - _please_.”

Suppressing a laugh, I kiss his throat, my hand on his length continuing. “Of course not, this is too much fun.” I emphasize the words with a nip, his skin finally finding its way between my teeth. Another moan escapes him, and for a while, I’m perfectly happy to just stay like this, with him leaning up against me, content to just watch him come undone beneath my hands. I know that I am far from being an expert in this subject - after all, this only my second time getting him hard like this, but the way he whimpers, the way his back bows…

It really is something else. 

Julian’s white knuckled hands grip the edges of the porcelain tub, his head tosses back with a moan held behind a twitching, bitten lip before a whispered “ _fuck_.” The extra leverage does push him back against me a little too firmly, but I don't shove him off, don’t cry out. 

“Rougher,” he begs between gasps and murmurings of other languages I don’t quite recognize. “Please, I like... you can be a little less gentle with me, I shan’t break.”

I don’t want to hurt him, not when he’s being so open, vulnerable. But, not wanting to leave him unsatisfied, I tighten my grip on the end of him, slam down a little more forcefully each time I come to his base. My lips find his neck again, and I waste no time in biting, in sucking him firmly the way he’d done to me before. 

“Do you like it when I’m rough with you like this?” I ask as much for my own benefit as his, trailing a sharp nail down the center of his chest with my free hand and hoping that it comes across as sexy, as if I know what I’m doing. 

“I did… say I’m a masochist at heart,” he reminds me, once again jerking beneath my hand. I wrap my arm tightly above his hips as low down as I can reach, holding his tensing abdomen perfectly flush and immobile against my own. My nails dig into the soft flesh on the sides of his waist, and it's as though all the frantic motion in his body is then transferred to his thighs, desperate for some outlet, for they too start to twitch as he reaches his climax. I do my best to snake my legs through his, to press his long, gangly limbs against the sides of the bath, holding him steady. 

“Nearly there?” I pant, starting to feel the effort of lightly restraining him in my own body as I pick up my pace around his cock, the rippling waves of the bath reducing my sight of his lovely limbs to no more than distorted, squiggly lines. 

He groans a response in yet another language I don’t quite catch, and I shrug it off.

“You’re so nice like this, you know?” I almost growl it into him with all the effort I’m putting into getting this right. “Tense and gasping and-”

With a cry which is somehow softer than I was expecting but no less guttural, Julian’s tortured hips finally break through my restraint, canting up into my hand as he finds fulfillment in my teasing. His hand reaches back as if it has a mind of its own, and grips my hair and the side of my face, desperate for purchase, for something more real and tactile than the cold edge of the bath. A great deal of water abandons ship, unable to be contained alongside Julian’s thrashing, locking limbs, but it is the least of my concerns. 

I continue to work him until the hard lines of his body start to thaw, soften, and he slowly sinks back into my touch, panting slightly and trying to turn over on his side.

“Relax,” I whisper into his hair, petting it down, soothing him. I mean to have him just lie on me again while he rides out the rest of his orgasm, but he seems to have a different idea in mind.

Hungry, shaking arms spin us around so that he’s the one holding me atop him, both our chests pressing together. He keeps his eyes closed, whether from the heat of the moment or to keep his bad eye from my view, I don’t know, but he pulls me into a still gasping kiss before his hands still on my back and we just lie there for a long while, him reveling in physical pleasure while I revel in watching. 

My own arms are pressed to either side of him, hands flush against the back of the tub. There is no good way for me to switch my position, and so I wait it out, occasionally pressing soft kisses along Julian’s wet skin. 

“Thank you,” he says so very softly against my hair. One of his hands starts to trail lower down my back, closing in on my still sore entrance. “How can I possibly repay the favor on this fine morning?”

I shift up into a sitting position a little too suddenly, and Julian’s good eye winks open in concern. I smile at him, quickly, reassuring with a kiss on his lips which doesn’t turn into anything else, anything more. 

“You have no need to,” I say, once again pulling some hair down to cover half his face. I don’t know if I ever realized how finely boned, how nicely symmetrical he truly is without the patch, and I’m almost sad to have to go without seeing him entirely again. “Today is for me to take care of you, Julian. I don’t want anything else.”

Julian gapes at me, and I can’t help but laugh a little. “Surely, though - there has to be something I can do for you,” he stammers.

I cup his face between my hands, feeling warm and light and perfectly at ease. “Nothing more than what you’re already doing.”

The lazy smile which I give him is nothing short of resplendent - I can feel it practically glowing from me, and Julian’s face softens into a look akin to awe as he slowly brings his wandering hands back to rest. 

“I truly don’t deserve you,” he sighs, although there is a bit of happiness to his voice mixed in with the melancholy, a small, subtle remark on his apparent luck. 

I press my lips to his forehead. “Yes you do,” I say, even if I’m still reeling at my own luck, at what I must have done in my half-remembered past to deserve him, to be worthy of such tenderness, such delicate beauty. “And even if you don’t realize it now, you’re stuck with me until you do.”

His mouth twitches into a lopsided smirk. “Well then perhaps I’ll always have to be a self-deprecating wreck if it means that I get to hold onto you a little longer.”

I snort. “Dramatic, much?”

Julian laughs at that, pulls me up so that he can sit upright again, done with lounging and languid remarks. “Darling, you have no idea.”

Grinning like an idiot in love - _oh wait_ \- I convince Julian to let me wash his hair, lather soap down his body. As much as I want our bath shenanigans to continue indefinitely, I realize that I do have a store to run, that he has obligations of his own. I have us cleaned up and ready to face the growing day not too terribly long after, drying my hair with a quick charm before doing the same to Julian, noticing how jumpy the small act of magic seems to make him. Aside from him nearly wiping out on the wet tiles and only _narrowly_ missing the sharp edge of the counter with his very thick skull, we manage to leave and dress without too much of an incident, though a few chaste kisses threatening to lead to more have us pausing now and again along the way. 

We eat the food Julian brought over yesterday - garlic bread and cheesy noodles - because neither of us are above leftovers for what is quickly turning into brunch, and it is with a heavy heart that I walk Julian down the stairs and to the back door of the shop. He lingers for a moment on the threshold, tied to me by my hands clutching his as much as by the sense that there is something much greater possessing the both of us. 

“Dinner?” He asks quickly, clearing his throat and sounding cautiously hopeful. “I can swing by and get you after closing if you haven’t run for the hills by then.”

I smile, pull him down for a kiss, and agree quite happily. 

At long last, he makes to leave, giving me a bow and a smarmy grin which looks so endearingly stupid that my cackling laughter fills the alleyway as he struts out of it like a bird preening its feathers.

_No_ , I think, watching him disappear. _I’m not going anywhere._


	7. Confessions Brought to Light

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For all my returning readers, thank you for your patience while I worked on this latest chapter. Hopefully the contents of it make the wait somewhat worthwhile :)
> 
> Next update on this work will also be a slow one, but it _will_ happen (at some point) so keep a lookout <3

Everything seems different to me now, as cliche as that sounds. I'm in the middle of a murder investigation against my own lover, busy unraveling the secrets of an old plague, struggling to fill in the gaps of my memory, and running a store solo. Yet there has never been more hope in this world to me, more life. More color. 

Cliche, of course.

But true. 

Julian swings by most nights, sending a letter with Malak when he can’t. We have dinner, a few drinks. Sometimes he sleeps over, sometimes we go at things again. Sometimes he just lies there and stares at me with enough adoration in his gaze to make me blush a hundred shades of crimson and bury my head in his chest. 

We talk more often than anything. About life, about love. 

“I’ve been thinking about something you asked me at our first lesson,” I say one night at a corner table in the Rowdy Raven as I sip something awful yet strangely alluring at the same time.

Julian quirks his brow. “Oh? Do enlighten me.”

“You asked if I’d prefer to be dominant or submissive,” I recall, staring at him evenly over the rim of my glass. 

He stills for a moment, shifts. “I… I suppose I did ask something of that nature,” he says looking away. “Did you… think of an answer or…?”

“I wanted to know yours, actually. Purely for scientific interest, of course.”

“Oho, is that right?” He takes a swig of his salty bitter, and I can’t tell if the wince he makes is due to the topic or the taste. “It depends on the partner, of course, but…” he smirks. “I think you can guess the answer, love.”

_Love_.

I like that. 

“Well,” I begin, taking my time and finding amusement in his squirming. “I think that you enjoyed our bath a little too much to be dominant, Julian. You seemed perfectly content to let me pamper you.”

A blush fights its way to his cheeks, try as he might to force it down. “Only because you seemed so willing. But yes, you’ve done a remarkable job sleuthing me out.”

I smile as he laughs nervously, sloshes the drink around in his cup.

“Is that… alright with you? I can assume a different position, if you think it would-“

My hand on his wrist. “That works just fine.”

His soft smile has my whole heart aflutter.

It can’t last forever, of course. Asra comes back a week later, though thankfully, he seems to be in better spirits. As do I, for that matter. 

“You look so happy,” he remarks upon seeing me smiling wistfully at the herbs I’m restocking. 

I don’t even try to hide it. I don’t want to. “I _am_ happy,” I reply simply. 

Asra looks like he could fly if I asked him to. “I’m glad to hear it,” he says, squeezing my shoulder. “I was a little worried about leaving you, to be honest. You didn’t seem… like you were in a good place.”

My hand reaches up to hold his. “I was working through some stuff.”

“Anything you want to talk about?”

I make to decline, but then I pause. “Well, sort of, actually. Though it doesn’t have to be now.”

His face darkens a little, more out of worry than anything else, and he tilts his head with a smile that doesn’t quite reach his violet eyes. “The shop’s empty, and you know me. If you let me put off whatever this is I’m never going to remember to bring it back up.”

Very true. So, I take a breath, steel my nerves. Get on with it. “I’m seeing someone. Exclusively.”

I try to gage Asra’s reaction as he blinks, furrows his brow for a moment. The grin he gives me while clasping my hands is genuine, if not a little cautious. 

“That’s… good for you,” he says warmly. “Is it someone I know?”

I nod, bite my lip. Look away. “It’s… Julian,” I wince, afraid to see the look on his face. “It started off as… well, it doesn’t really matter how things started. We’re together now though, so…”

I’m blushing, worried. But Asra’s hands just tighten around mine. 

He swallows once, clears his throat. “Julian’s… a lot. Sometimes. And I’m sure I don’t have to remind you of the ransom on his head. Or that he tends to let his more melancholy inclinations get the better of him, but… if you’re happy, that’s all that matters,” he assures me, a little stiffly.

“I am. I really do like him, Asra.” I look at him briefly before my eyes resume their fascination with the floorboards. “I know you two used to see each other, I didn’t want things to be weird. That’s why I haven’t said anything.”

“It was a long time ago. _Neither_ of _us_ were in a very good… place then -” he waves his hand and shakes the sour expression from his face. “All I’m saying is that there isn’t anything there, anymore. Between us. There hasn’t been for years.”

Admittedly, that does come as quite a relief. 

I was so afraid to tell Asra, afraid he’d read my secret as a lack of trust as opposed to an abundance of sensitivity. A weight I didn’t realize I’ve been carrying lifts off my chest, and I don’t fight the smile that flies to my lips. “Thank you. For understanding.”

Asra shrugs, gives a lazy smile. “It explains why you keep looking at that one old spellbook with the temperature charms in it,” he says, walking around the counter and making to go back to the apartment. 

“I don’t follow?”

A smirk plays upon his lips, and he continues up the stairs, though not without calling out over his shoulder. “If I remember correctly, Julian rather likes that sort of spell.”

It isn’t until the apartment door overhead has closed that I catch Asra’s intended meaning. 

And suddenly, I decide that looking over those spells one more time will be a _much_ better use of my concentration than restocking dried herbs.

…

Julian takes me out for a quiet night at the theater. Or, it is _supposed_ to be a quiet night at the theater. There is one particular joke towards the end of the third act that Julian finds exceptionally hilarious, the sound of his cackling laughter drawing a few too many stares. I grab his hand as some palace guards start to edge their way into the crowd, no doubt tipped off by some loyalist as to Julian’s current whereabouts, and we make a quick exit through a stagehand’s backdoor and out into an alleyway. 

“Maze’s is closer,” he pants, an apologetic look on his face as we run into the night, weaving between lantern light and sticking to the shadows so as to avoid notice.

“Lead the way,” I whisper against his ear as we dart into an alcove at the sound of boots nearby.

“I am sorry about all this,” he says, gaze not leaving the street opening before us.

“It keeps things exciting. Besides, the ending to that show was so predictable.”

Julian arches a brow. “Oh?”

I nod. “The princess is going to choose the pirate.”

“Is she now?”

“They had that whole duet in act two Julian, it’s painfully obvious.”

A quiet laugh, and he’s leading me through a series of back allies, just a few more blocks to go. “I think you might be a little biased towards pirates yourself, darling.”

I’d stick my tongue out at him If I weren’t afraid of biting it off while tripping over a loose cobblestone. Someone really needs to get on top of city planning.

Not long after, Julian’s rummaging through his pockets for the key to Mazelinka’s, and just when I’m afraid to ask if he plans on climbing through the window, he produces it with an exclamation loud enough to make a few nearby crows squawk in protest. 

“Julian, do you _want_ to get arrested?” I hiss half-heartedly as he stuffs the key in the lock.

“I do so enjoy manacles,” he replies with a filthy grin just as the door swings open and ushers us inside. 

I take a note of it. 

We shut and bolt the door to the sound of footsteps starting to pick up again, and both of us press against the wall to avoid being seen through one of the windows.

“Mazelinka isn’t here, is she?” I ask, more so as of a way to distract myself from the adrenaline finally starting to crash than out of curiosity. 

“Out for the weekend. Something about breaking in a friend’s new yacht. Or, perhaps, she said 'breaking _into_ her friend's yacht.”

I can’t help but snort. “I’d love to meet this woman someday,” I laugh, pushing off the wall and walking leisurely into the kitchen. 

“If you’re looking for booze, don’t bother. Even I don’t know where she hides it all,” Julian says, following me. My eyes snag on a green paper box sitting by the stove - it’s what we use in the shop to package up herbs. 

Julian’s arms wrap around my waist, sitting low on my hips as he playfully buries his cold nose into my neck. For once, I’m too distracted by my own thoughts to remember to yelp at him about it. 

“Julian, does Maze happen to call you… Ilyushenka or something like that?”

He bites back a chuckle. “You _have_ met her after all,” he says, spinning me around so that his hands settle on my lower back. 

“I sold her something a week ago for soup,” I say, trying to remember. “Valerian root, I think.”

Julian’s beaming. “She calls me Ilyushka,” he says warmly.

“Why?”

A tinge of color rises to his cheeks. “Its… well, it’s my name. Ilya, is, I mean. Ilyushka is a diminutive.”

I blink, slowly. “Your name _isn’t_ Julian?”

The look of shock on my face must be nothing short of comedic, because Julian goes off into a cackling fit once more, only adding to the blush spreading along on my own cheeks.

Well, at least he’s happy, for once. 

He plants a kiss on my forehead when he’s finally managed to catch his breath, and I can feel the smile on his lips. “I took up ‘Julian’ as a battlefield medic over a decade ago because it was easier for people to say when they called me for help. It’s just sort of stuck since then, though I have no shortage of other nicknames should you find any of the previously mentioned lacking.”

“I just didn’t know,” I admit softly. “Ilya… am I saying it right?”

A little shiver runs down his spine at that, and I don’t think I’ve ever seen him smile so much. “You’re saying it _adorably_ , my love. Never stop.”

I scrunch up my nose, and he just pulls me tighter. 

“I am sorry about the theater,” he says after a few silent moments in which I just enjoy his closeness. “I long for the day I can take you out on the town without looking over my shoulder.”

“I’m glad to hear you aren’t dead set on incriminating yourself anymore,” I say, peering at him through my eyelashes. “Because you do make one hell of a better pirate than that sad sap on the stage holding a hook in his fist and I would be devastated to see that talent wasted behind bars.”

He barks a laugh again, and the next thing I know I’m hoisted up in his arms with my legs wrapping out of habit around his waist. “And you make for a lovely _Printsessa_ , dear heart. I don’t intend to stop pestering you until you have me thrown out of the kingdom for lewd behavior.”

“Is that right?”

“Indeed.”

“Well then,” I say with a rock of my hips that leaves him grinning. “You’re going to want to get started on that lewd behavior, aren’t you?”

“Only if you promise not to throw me out.”

For the first time all night, his grin falters for just a fraction of a second, and I take it as my cue to press my lips against his. “Oh no, that’s not my style. I much prefer to keep my capital offenders in manacles.” 

“Oho, you temptress,” he snarls, practically bolting up the stepladder to the loft and leaving me to cling to his torso like my life depends on it. “I do hope you aren’t being facetious.”

He sets me on the edge of the bed with a force I can only call avid eagerness, caressing my skull saccharinely as he lowers me down, pressing sloppy kisses along my jawline as I laugh happily. 

“I love that sound,” he purrs, running a long, gloved finger down my sternum. “Better than any symphony.”

“Julian,” I whine, unable to hide my smile. 

“What, am I going too slowly? Need me to pick up the pace, Printsessa?”

Happiness mixes with slight embarrassment at the term of affection, but somehow, I don’t mind. “No, I’m… I’m starting to see why you like my little affectionate words so much,” I mutter.

His lips twitch up as his brows peak in the center. “You didn’t expect me not to return the favor, did you? I may be a pirate but I do insist on sharing that particular treasure with you.”

Heat pools in my stomach as his kisses resume in a slow, languid pace, trailing to the neckline of my shirt with a great deal of slowness. 

“I expect you want to ravish me?” I ask, my breathing hitching as I feel teeth against my skin. 

“Doubtless. If you’re so willing.”

My legs, still wrapped around his torso, tighten around him as I push myself sideways on the mattress, effectively spinning us so that I’m kneeling on top of him, staring down into his look of surprise with a mischievous smile. “I have something different in mind, Ilya,” I say, testing out the name in my mouth once again. 

His lips part, his eye widens into a look of reverence. When he speaks, it is so very softly. “Oh?”

I nod, a hum in the back of my throat. “Mhm. That is, if you think you can handle it.”

I feel his jerk of anticipation beneath my own awakening core, and his hands shakily reach up to ghost over my sides, running the length of me from my ribs to my thighs, still gloved. 

That will have to be remedied. 

“Oh I certainly can,” he says, affecting a tone of bravado that falls a little short, a little breathy. “I’ll be good for you darling, I’ll do whatever you ask, take whatever you’ll give me. I’ll be so good.”

_Gods, that’s hot_. It’s as if he knows exactly what I want to hear, intent to undo me on words alone the way I’d threatened him the morning after our first time. After my first time. Well, I’ve picked up a few things since then, but seeing as he’s always so intent on my own consent, I’ll be forthright with him as well. Relationships need to trust both ways, and I'll not hurt him in a manner which he doesn’t want, not when he’s looking at me like _that_ with a lip between his teeth like I’m offering him divine salvation.

“I have a spell,” I start, drawing back from the moment a little. “One I think you’ll like, but I need your pretty mouth to tell me that it’s alright before I begin.”

Some of the heat leaves his eye, but not all of it. “And, uh, what sort of spell are you thinking of, darling?”

I lean back a little on his hips, unpinning him as I press my hands together, thinking back to the old pages of the book with _success!_ written in the margins, reaching within myself to the magic sitting just below the surface of my skin and using it to warm my hands with thoughts of the fire salamander that heats my stove and hot flagstones beneath my feet on a warm summer day. Julian watches with thinly veiled apprehension the entire time, and when I part my scorching hands and extend them to him, he hesitates for just a moment before touching my palm with his forearm, separated by a thin layer of white fabric.

His eyebrows shoot up in surprise. “Oh, it’s _that_ spell,” he breathes, looking at me with new excitement. “You know there was this lovely tavern wench I met once who would drip candle wax down my back? It was rather messy, that, and it always cooled far too quickly.”

“I’m sure there are magical candles that could perform better,” I smirk, letting the heat fade from my hands but keeping the spell nearby, letting the magic pool in the veins in my wrist just beneath my palm, throbbing and electric.

He shakes his head, lies back down, arms compliantly at his sides. “No, I uh, prefer this method, actually. It… lasts longer. The… sensation.”

“And how much of a sensation do you want?” I ask, a bit of excitement at his eager acceptance sneaking into my voice. “I know you like a little pain now and again, but I don’t really want to hurt you.”

“Need I remind you that I can take anything you throw at me?” he smirks, running a finger sensually across his throat where I now know the latent magic mark appears when he heals or takes an injury, the one he claims was Asra’s parting gift to him, though I suspect something else is at play on that front.

I lean down, kiss his skin there gently. “No, but I’d rather not test any limits on that tonight. I’ll get close, if that’s what you want, but I won’t do more harm than good.”

He scoffs lightly at that, but I can see something like appreciation in the softness of his gaze, as he mutters something like “alright” beneath his breath.

With a smile, I sit back up, let my fingers run over the front of his shirt, lower. He whines when I climb off him, swing my legs over the side of the bed to kick off my shoes. 

“Patience,” I chide, earning a blush from him. “I’m getting to you.”

Once I’ve let myself loose, I return to him, running my hands over his tight thighs as they hold oh so still. Oh so patient. 

I fold up the top of his boots, untie the lacings that keep the wretched things bound so tightly, slide the leather off. He watches me the entire time, focusing on my fingers and their promised warmth, at the magic yet to come. 

“Gloves,” I say nonchalantly, dumping the boots over the side of the bed and nestling myself between his spread legs, the fabric covering them stretching tight with the motion. 

Slowly, tantalizingly slowly as if to test my own resolve, Julian brings one hand to his lips, taking the leather around his index finger between his teeth and twisting his head to the side, pulling the glove away without breaking my gaze, one inch at a time. 

It takes everything in me not to bark at him as he gives the other glove the same treatment, the same anticipatory restraint. 

He offers the shed gloves to me, and they too join the boots unceremoniously down on the floor beside us. My fingers loosen the silk around his waist, leaving the shirt to come free.

“Do you want my touch on your front or on your back, Ilya,” I ask, feeling throbbing heat start to spread in my palms. “I fully intend to take you myself later on tonight, so keep in mind that whatever skin I touch, you might be laying on it later.”

“I don’t care where you touch me,” he shudders, fighting to keep his gaze steady. “I want to feel you everywhere, hot and stinging and-”

“Then strip,” I say, letting my scorching hands hover. “Shirt first. Then your trousers.”

“You don’t want to be the one to rip them off of me?”

I raise an eyebrow in mock strictness. “I thought you wanted to be good for me.”

His mouth gapes, his cheeks color. “Oh I like this side of you very much,” he drawls, moving to obey my command with great haste, and, I note, not much gentleness. 

In a moment, he’s once again bare before me, his marble skin stretched over his strong bones, taut muscles. I let myself look him over from top to bottom, noticing the pinkness to his chest where his flesh is full and the bluish tinge to the divet in his throat, the inside of his wrists as his hands press palm up on the sheets beside his shoulders. 

I could look at him like this all day, spread out before me. Waiting, behaving. 

Well, almost. A whimper of his spurs me on, and I extend one finger, letting it hover in the dip between his pecs in the same place he’d trailed his finger down me, close enough so that he can feel the heat radiating from me but not quite near enough to touch him. Teasing. 

And when he arcs his back to press into my touch, I pull my hand away even farther, earning a petulant groan from him. 

“ _Behave_ ,” I chide, laughing softly, my hand now clutched near my chest. “Or I really won’t let you have any fun.”

“You’re making it so difficult,” he says in a tone which is practically asking me to delay his satisfaction, draw it out in the night. 

Luckily, I am obliging. 

“Turn over,” I say, getting off him. “You said the wench dripped on your back, let’s see if I can do better.”  
He gives me an agonized glance as he shoves himself over, muttering something about my being jealous I pretend not to hear. I watch the broad muscles in his back ripple as his arms force them to elongate, settling above his head with his wrists crossed rather demurely like a dancer. I assume he’s silently asking me to tie him up, but I haven’t studied knots, nor do I have anything with which to easily restrain him, and so he’ll just have to settle for pretending. 

While his chest presses firmly into the bed, I notice how he digs his knees down, alleviating some of the pressure on his half-hard arousal pinned beneath his stomach, leaving him with space to rut into the sheets for friction no doubt. I consider telling him to flatten himself, an action which will surely produce a delightful groan of protest that I will find personally pleasurable, but the view of his tight ass raised in the air is just good enough to have me reconsider, the sight of it doing about as much for me as the sound of his protest would. 

Well, I’ll be getting other sounds from him, and soon if the side eyed impatience he sends my way is anything to go by. 

My hands, hot and pulsing and itching to come into contact with him, raise as I swing one leg over the arched small of his back. I don’t sit down on him, not yet, allowing him the freedom to move as I support myself on my knees. 

He holds deathly still as I survey my territory, my options. The mountains of his shoulder blades, the valley between them, the chasm that is his spine…

I start by reaching up and over, ghosting my fingers across the twin creases where his stretched out shoulders meet his torso, the tips of my fingers trailing him like the prongs of a rake through dead leaves, a sled pulled through fresh snow. 

“That's… rather pleasant, actually,” he sighs into the pillow. 

Good, but pleasure isn’t what he wants, is it?

I take two fingers then, and drag the last two segments with more pressure than before along either side of his spine, watching with fascination as it causes waves of motion in the surrounding areas just beneath his skin. 

“Still pleasant?” I ask, waiting to touch him again until after he’s answered. 

“You have to remember I grew up in a town famous for hot springs,” he laughs, shifting his shoulders. “You might have to try a little harder.”

I blink, stare at my palms. _Really_?

Maybe the mark lessens his pain, maybe he really is just numb to extreme temperatures. Or, maybe the act along with his phrasing is just a way to get me to be as rough with his body as he seems to want me to be. Whatever the case, I sigh, press my palms flat against the columns at the base of his back, and hold them there, letting the heat come in pulses, gradually building with each throb of the magic in my veins. 

Needless to say, that finally seems to do the trick. 

Julian’s hands, once resting at peace, tense into action, gripping the sheets and fisting them for all their worth. 

Just when a strangled cry loosens itself from his lips, my touch flies off him, leaving two warm, red marks on his icy skin in the shape of my hands. Not burns, I would never go so far, but rather the same change in skin that is brought about when exposed to hot water or a rested elbow for too long - an even coloring and nothing more, but I blow cool air from my lips across the irritated flesh, and Julian cries out in ecstasy. 

“That’s more like it,” he gasps, rolling his hips very unsubtly behind my own. 

I allow it. 

For now. 

The sound he makes when my fingers find their next target - the sides of his wonderfully exposed ribcage - is a mix between a yelp of pain and a moan of pleasure, and I am sure to concentrate very closely on just how hot my hands get before pulling them away. 

“Keep them on for longer,” he begs. “You take them away just as it starts to get good.”

“Are you really making demands of me right now?”

Silence. 

A slight, embarrassed cough. “...no.”

“Because you can, of course,” I say, pressing into his shoulder blades next with the weight of my own torso behind my actions. “Though I cannot guarantee my compliance. I might tease and tease and just when you think I’ve given in...”

I pull my hands off him right before the spell reaches its peak, earning a very petulant whine that Julian has the good sense to muffle into the pillow. His hips writhe again, and while the sight is so wonderfully delightful, it simply won’t do.

I’m off him once more, but instead of telling him to turn over so that he has nothing but air to thrust into, I press one hand firmly on his back while the other jerks his hips higher up, forcing his spine to curve so that I have better access to him. 

“Don’t you trust me to take care of you?” I muse, letting my hands linger longer, give him what he wants. The marks left behind are a little redder, and the size of them has spread as the heat starts to radiate away from my skin.

It takes him a moment to find his words, and they sound nearly strangled from the position I have him in, but he holds perfectly in place even without my hands to guide him. “I know you will, darling. I just… _gods_ , I want you so much you have no idea.”

My eyes flicker down to his stiff cock red and bare between his flexed legs, and I cannot hide the knowing smile that finds its way to my lips. “Oh, I think I might.”

I grab his ass then, two fistfulls of scorching flesh, and they clench and twist beneath me. The spell reaches its peak, and Julian lets loose another whimper. I release my grip, but the fingers on my right hand are not done with him. 

They slide down, ghosting over his entrance but not delving inside, instead heading for that sensitive place before his balls, that taut bit of skin that I've recently found is so wonderfully receptive to even the most careful touch. 

Julian moans into the sheets, and just when the spell starts to strengthen, I lower the heat - after all, it is a sensitive area. However, I increase the frequency of the pulsations, making them faster and more potent as well. 

“Oh, that’s new,” he gasps, twisting back to look at me. 

“Do you like it?” I ask, watching him carefully for a reaction, for it to be too much. 

He takes a breath just as the pulsing doubles in strength, and for a moment, I fear that speech has left him. “Yes,” he gasps after a few moments. “I can feel it… up _through_ me, Like you’re pulling on my withered heart.”

I slide my left hand under his abdomen, adding pulses just above the base of his shaft. Sex is new to me, still, but magic and its effects on the human body, is not. I can read his every jerk, moan, know exactly what my hot, throbbing hands are doing to him and his aching cock. Perhaps there is some connection between us, magically or not. 

“Your heart is a good one,” I say, leaning down close to his ear. “If my laughter is your favorite sound, your heart makes my own when I listen to it at night.”

He jolts his hips, trying to get his neglected cock to have some sort of purchase, relief. “It beats for you, of course,” he says with what seems to be a great effort. “Only… you.”

_Oh Julian_.

I reward the sentiment by running a hot index down the length of him, finally granting that, at least. My hand closes, slides down to his base, and I begin to swap the pulsating current between my hands, going from one place on his body to the other, his flesh acting as a conducting medium in which to send it. 

Each pan of the magic has him gasping, quick and desperate and growing more so by the second.

“I… won’t… last,” he moans, each word cut short by the intensity of my spell as it hits him again and again. 

“You will,” I say, mostly just guessing. Despite how adept he’s become at sensing my own tell before climaxing, I’ve yet to quite find his. Nothing evidences this more than the sudden thrust out of my hands as he gives a muffled cry and spills onto the bed, his tormented hips finally giving way as they fall on top of the mess. 

For a moment, I just watch his back as he heaves each breath, head turned to the side surrounded by clenched sheets. Sweat glistens amongst the welts on his skin, and after he does not move, I think of winter and peppermint and dark ocean waters, and then I run frigid fingers over my marks on him, knowing that though they will heal soon, I might as well ease the pain.

“Sorry,” he pants as I make the first touch. “I should have… tried to hold it.”

I shrug, despite him not really being able to see, still sending soft coolness into his back.

“You didn’t even get to have any fun,” he says guiltily, reaching for my knee, the closest thing to his hands. 

“I never said that we were done,” I smile, hoping that I’m still playing my part correctly, that bossing him around is still acceptable. In all honesty, I don’t know if I’ll ever tire of watching him come undone, feel it with my own hands. But, I am aware that I have my own needs to fulfill, that being with Julian has let me want more for myself than I might have ever thought I wanted. I know how he can make me ache, and once exposed to that particular poison…

Well, it’s almost addicting, isn’t it?

With a great effort, Julian forces himself on his elbows, craning his neck to look back at me with a tired, if not wicked smile. “Is that right?”

“Mhm.”

A soft chuckle escapes his lips, and he slowly turns himself to lie on his back, wincing as his abused skin hits the mattress. 

I break, just a little, crawling closer to read the expression in his eyes. “Did I hurt you?”

He just laughs again, his hands weakly reaching up to twine into my hair. “No, my love. Not more than I wanted you to.”

I sigh from relief, tilt my head so that I can kiss the delicate flesh of his inner wrist.

“It will take a bit, though. For me to be… ready to please you.”

True enough, his cock, now nicely slicked, is sitting at rest against his stomach. It won’t be of much use to me for some time. “There are other ways of pleasing me, Ilya,” I say darkly, enjoying the shudder my words elicit from him. 

His hand slips down, settles around my waist. I only just remember that I’m still, somehow, in my own clothes, and that simply won’t do. 

“Tell me what you want,” Julian breathes, fingers playing at the waistband of my pants. “Tell me what feels good to you.”

His lips, glossy and swollen from having bitten them himself so many times, part a little, practically begging to be kissed. 

And so, I oblige, pushing forward and bringing my hand to splay across his neck, resting there but not pushing as my mouth meets his. “Strip me,” I pant when the kiss breaks, only to immediately go back in for more. Julian’s moan is lost in the sound of the sheets rustling, of my clothing being shed as his hands knead me with their firm grasp. I can feel my wetness as it’s exposed to the air, its presence signalling wordlessly to Julian just exactly where I need him most, where I ache for him. 

And ache I do. When his first fingers slip inside my entrance, my walls clench around him of their own accord, tightening even more as he curves his fingers inward and applies pressure to them which makes me squirm and fist at his hair. His tongue then playfully seeks permission into my mouth, thus invading me on two separate fronts. Like my hands had synced the pulsating magic, Julian’s fingers and tongue seem to be two partners in a dance with my body held close between them, pushing and scraping and seeking to go deeper, harder. His other hand grips my side, holding me for support, but before he can move to my clitoris, I summon the pulsating spell with the limited part of my brain that still holds some independent sentience over what his tongue is doing and move there myself. Almost instantly, my inner thighs twitch of their own accord, and I cry out at just how potent the spell is. No wonder Julian hadn’t been able to last long. 

“Careful,” he warns, staring up at me with utter adoration. “Or we’ll both be spent early and neither of us will get to enjoy what’s yet to come.”

Well put.

I lower the spell’s magnitude significantly, letting the pulse come only once every few seconds, an almost painfully slow beat. Julian must be able to feel it through my body, however, because he starts to time the thrusts of his fingers to come just before the pulse in mine creating a tantalizing, heartbeat-like rhythm that seems to draw me into a trance as it become all I can focus on, the _one-two_ jolts of pleasure. 

“Fuck, you feel good,” I find myself whimpering, rolling my hips over his long, deft fingers. 

“It’s all you darling,” he sighs with a smile. “Your magic, your body. Use me to get yourself wet, hot.”

“Already there.”

A wicked grin as he curls and twists his fingers. “Then come for me.”

It’s close, so very, very close, but not yet. I can hold it, lessen the spell even further. I don’t want to come, not yet, not until I feel his cock inside me, filling me up more deeply than his hands can, as pleasurable as they are. 

So, I release my touch on myself, think of the burning heat filling my core, and place my once again scorching hands high on his chest, worshipping the way his back arches as a result, his fingers faltering their thrusts inside me. 

When his eye once again cracks open, staring at me through the jarring jolts that the magical current sends through his body, there are tears there, and I’m instantly afraid that I’ve gone too far. 

“Should I stop?”

At first, he just shakes his head with enough vigor to ease my alarm, the words coming later. “You’re… so good to me,” he pants, pressing into my now-painful touch. “And this… the pain… it’s marvelous.”

His head tosses back as more pulses come, though his fingers do manage to resume their work inside me. My Julian, so considerate.

“A three syllable word?” I muse, finally releasing my hand from him. “I think that deserves a reward, Ilya dearest.”

Before he can so much as shudder with anticipation, my hands ghost over the bulge in his throat, and I feel his whole body go rigid. I don’t press on him - I haven’t the faintest idea how to strangle Julian in a way that isn’t painful or dangerous and I’m sure as hell not going to try it now, but my searing fingers trace along him, and I can feel each swallow, each moan. 

A few moments later, something hard and sticky is pressing into my ass, ready and waiting oh so patiently.

“Do you want to fuck me now?” I ask, drawing my hands away so as to give him a chance to catch his breath and come up with a coherent sentence, something which he seems no longer capable of even so.  
Instead, staring me down with an unwavering gaze, he lifts my hips slightly with one hand, and with the fingers still soaked in my arousal, he guides his cock to my entrance, lining it up by feel alone, and watching my reaction as I sense him against me. 

A single nod on his end, and I take him in, my eyes widening as he goes further. We’ve never done it like this, with me straddling his hips, riding him. It’s different, the sensation it brings, not deeper or shallower, but more that he hits new places within me at this angle, spots his fingers never found or that his cock couldn’t reach before. As such, I let myself have a moment to squirm, to writhe around him, seeing where I can position him to give me the most sensation. 

But by the look on Julian’s face as he watches my microadjustments, my subtleties, the slowness of it all is utter torture to him. 

And so, with a bitten smile, I push down on the bed, raise myself up so that his shaft is exposed to the hot air around us, waiting so that just the head of him stays submerged in my folds, and just as he starts a whine for me to continue, I slam down, jarring our hip bones as skin collides and as his whimper is culled with a gasp.

His head presses back, but behind me I feel him bend his legs to get more purchase on the mattress below us, thrusting into me. The last time we’d been in this house, in this room, Julian had been separated from me by fabric, by fear of taking things too far. Now, there is nothing between us, nothing to stop us from joining together and becoming one. With a heady moan escaping my own lips, I mimic the motions I had done on his thigh then, swiveling around and finding friction as he ruts into me like there isn’t anything else in existence that is more important than the both of us in that moment. Perhaps there isn't - the world could quite literally be flipped upside down around us, and I don’t think I would notice. No, all I can see, sense, is Julian beneath me, the rhythmic pounding up, hitting my cervix and making me gasp, falter. One of his hands reaches up to cup my swaying breast, tethering me to him as if I’d float away otherwise. As I slowly become more undone, as Julian brings me to the edge, he pulls me down, all the while gazing at me with a look of utter bliss, of wonder. As if I am something ethereal, as if he cannot even trust his own eyes to be sure of my existence. Like I am his whole, entire world, just the same way that he is mine.

Our foreheads touch, and I realize it is mere moments before I see stars, float away to join them if only for a few brief heartbeats of bliss before returning to my love. Because I will return. How can I not? When he looks at me like _that_ -

“You’re so close,” he realizes with something akin to awe as my breathing picks up, hitches as each thrust of his draws near. “Let it out, love. Let me see you come - let me _feel_ it. Come on my cock, daring, _please_.”

Well, if he’s going to ask so _nicely_ …

In my last second of coherence, I summon the pulsing to my fingers, pressing them against Julian’s lower abdomen as my vision unfocuses, as I feel myself clench so tightly around his cock that my pelvis bones pop with the exertion like they’re finally being stretched and used to their maximum potential. He doesn’t stop his thrusts as I stiffen, fall forward against his chest, my face falling near his shoulder. I climax with a whimper, a word on my lips. His name. 

“Oh Ilya,” I sigh, sounding raw and vulnerable and like I’m seconds away from breaking, or mending. Somehow, it doesn’t seem to matter if I'm being built anew or torn to shreds, so long as he just keeps holding me. 

Julian’s head turns, plants a kiss in my hair. His hips start to slow, as if he's forgotten himself entirely. I bite the skin by his neck, earning a growl and a renewal in pace as he works to reach his own climax. I’m so tired, the effort of running from guards and riding Julian and spending all my magic finally catching up with me. I’m afraid I’m not much help in aiding his own finish, aside from being somewhere warm and wet in which to stick his cock, but Julian manages a minute later to find completion, the spurting of his spend hitting my walls and making me feel full, even as he softens, pulls out. There is no aftercare tonight; we’ll deal with the consequences of such laziness in the morning. Now, there is only us, only the hammering of his heart against my chest, slowing to sync with my own as he holds me close, shudders into my hair. I feel tears against my skin as I begin to drift off, and I’m aware of my hand clawing its way into Julian’s mop of unruly red hair, stroking in a few soothing patterns before the limb feels like something disconnected from my body entirely.

I’m asleep, or just almost so, when Julian pulls me yet closer as we lay front-to-front on our sides, somehow having found our way into the sheets at that point. I’m not sure if I imagine his soft voice mumbling the same words over and over again or not, as straddled between the worlds of waking and sleeping as I am, but I could swear that it’s his voice I hear uttering just three words like a prayer, like a confession to some divine entity that will know of his confession without giving a response, a creature of silent acknowledgement.  
I hope that he is speaking, if only for the sweetness of those three words as they linger in the air, as they fill me with hope and spur on sweetness in dreams.

“I love you,” he says with a breath like the wind in the leaves of some ancient willow tree. “I love you.”


End file.
